She sat all huddled together behind the screen, partly undressed, her face hidden in her hands; and between the slender fingers tears ran down brightly. "Are you ill?" he asked, anxiously. After a moment she slowly shook her head. "Then--what in the name of Mike--" "P-please forgive me. I--I will be ready in a in-moment--if you wouldn't mind going out--" "_Are_ you ill? Answer me?" "N-no." "Has anything disturbed you so that you don't feel up to posing to-day?" "No.... I--am--almost ready--if you will go out--" He considered her, uneasy and perplexed. Then: "All right," he said, briefly. "Take your own time, Miss West." At his easel, fussing with yard-stick and crayon, he began to square off his canvas, muttering to himself: "What the deuce is the matter with that girl? Nice moment to nurse secret sorrows or blighted affections. There's always something wrong with the best lookers.... And she is a real beauty--or I miss my guess." He went on ruling off, measuring, grumbling, until slowly there came over him the sense of the nearness of another person. He had not heard her enter, but he turned around, knowing she was there. She stood silent, motionless, as though motion terrified her and inertia were salvation. Her dark hair rippled to her waist; her white arms hung limp, yet the fingers had curled till every delicate nail was pressed deep into the pink palm. She was trying to look at him. Her face was as white as a flower. "All right," he said under his breath, "you're practically faultless. I suppose you realise it!" A scarcely perceptible shiver passed over her entire body, then, as he stepped back, his keen artist's gaze narrowing, there stole over her a delicate flush, faintly staining her from brow to ankle, transfiguring the pallour exquisitely, enchantingly. And her small head drooped forward, shadowed by her hair. "You're what I want," he said. "You're about everything I require in colour and form and texture." She neither spoke nor moved as much as an eyelash. "Look here, Miss West," he said in a slightly excited voice, "let's go about this thing intelligently." He swung another easel on its rollers, displaying a sketch in soft, brilliant colours--a multitude of figures amid a swirl of sunset-tinted clouds and patches of azure sky. "You're intelligent," he went on with animation,--"I saw that--somehow or other--though you haven't said very much." He laughed, and laid his hand on the painted canvas beside him: