“Oh--I’m disturbing you.” She made a movement to push off. He smiled in a noncommittal way, but said nothing. She did not conceal her discontent with treatment of a kind to which she apparently was not used. “You might at least have the politeness to say no. I’d not take advantage of it,” said she--a rebuke for his rudeness in her raillery. “I was debating something.... I need you in my picture. But posing is tiresome work.” She brightened. “I’d be glad to. Will you let me? I do so wish to be of some use. How long would it take?” “Not long--that is, not long any one morning,” was his apologetic assurance. “You mean--several mornings?” said she, a mingling of longing and hesitation in her expressive features. “I work slowly.” The more he considered the matter the more necessary she seemed to his picture. His artist’s selfishness was aroused. “I’m sure you’d not mind,” said he, deliberately using a tone that would make refusal difficult, ungracious. A curious strained expression came into her eyes as she reflected. “I--I--don’t know what to say.” “You think I’m asking heavy pay for my hospitality?” “No--no, indeed,” protested she earnestly. “I can’t tell you what I was thinking.” The more he considered the idea the apparition of her in that graceful posture in the canoe had suggested the more it seemed an inspiration. He was regarding her now with the artist’s eye only. She leaned on her paddle, lost in reverie; the look of the self-satisfied, over-petted American girl faded from her face; the sunbeams flung a golden glamour over her yellow hair and her delicate skin. He saw alluring possibilities of idealizing her face into the center and climax of the dreamy romance he was going to try to make of his first American picture. His original impulse to get rid of her as a useless, perhaps disquieting intruder had gone altogether. He was resolved to have this providential model. “I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said he, “but I really need you. It’d be a--a service to”--he smiled--“to art.” She seemed not to hear. Presently she compressed her lips, looked at him defiantly--a strange look that somehow disquieted him for an instant. “Where do you want me to put myself?” she asked, stepping into the canoe. They spent half an hour in trying various positions and poses before he got just what he wanted. His impersonal way of treating her, his frank comments, some of them flattering, others the reverse, amused her immensely. But he was as unconscious of her amusement as of her personality or his own. She obeyed him without a protest, patiently held the pose he asked--held it full fifteen minutes. He had a way--the way of the man who knows what he is about--that inspired her with respect and made her feel she was at something worth while. “That’ll do beautifully,” he said at last. “You must be tired.” “I can stand it a while longer,” she assured him.