He did not immediately reply, but continued to work on the portrait before him which seemed to him more and more hopelessly colorless and lifeless compared with his model. “Perhaps my point of view is too concentrated to be of much value,” he said at length; “to me the mere fact of your existence seems enough to compensate for the loss of a good many more actively employed and earthly individuals who must be working out your privileged season as a lily of the field.” She gave him a quick, slightly amazed look, and blushed. “You speak as though I were selected from the rubbish heap!” she exclaimed laughing, “as though I profited by the misfortunes of others. I don’t know whether to regard it as a compliment or not!” But Allestree was quite unmoved, absorbed indeed in his work. “Did I ever pay you a compliment, Rose?” he asked, after an instant, meeting her glance with one that was so eloquent of deeper feeling that she withdrew hers, vaguely alarmed. “I don’t believe you ever did,” she replied hastily, with an instinctive desire to put off any suggestion of passion on his part, for much as she liked him and long as she had known him, Allestree was only a lay figure on her horizon; he had never stirred her heart, and she dreaded a break in that friendship which she dreamed of prolonging forever with a girl’s usual infatuated belief in the possibilities of such a friendship between a man and a woman. The channel into which their talk had unconsciously drifted so alarmed her indeed that she rose abruptly and went to the window and stood looking down into the street, her perfect profile and the soft upward sweep of her beautiful hair showing against the dark draperies which she had pushed aside, and moving the painter in turn to still deeper depths of artistic self-abasement. “Robert,” she said suddenly, after a moment’s embarrassed silence, “who was that with you the other evening? Was it Mr. Fox?” Allestree glanced up quickly, and then stooped to pick up a brush which had dropped to the floor. “Yes,” he said quietly, “how did you happen to recognize him?” “I was not sure--but I’ve seen two or three pictures of him in the magazines and the weeklies. One can’t forget his head, do you think?” and she came slowly back to her chair, unconscious of the change in Allestree’s expression. “Well, I never tried,” he confessed; “I’ve known William Fox all my life, and he’s my own first cousin besides. It’s rather odd,” he added, “by the way, that you never met him, but then you have been away from the city when he has been here.” Rose regarded him thoughtfully, her composure fully restored. “He has a very remarkable face,” she observed, “and it is fine and pale like a bit of old ivory.” “Oh, yes, all the women fall in love with him,” Allestree assented with impatient irony.