"It's starvation, that's what it is. I'm sick for want of what other girls get without asking--pretty clothes and--and all that sort of thing."
"Meaning," the artist interpreted gravely, "love."
"Well," Sally demanded, defiant, "why not?"
"Why not indeed?" Lucy returned obliquely, wandering round the studio and collecting various articles of wearing-apparel toward her appearance in public.
"I'm twenty-seven," Miss Manvers declared mutinously. "I'll never be younger--I want to be loved before I'm old!"
She paused, viewed with reassuring amusement Lucy's countenance of perplexity, and laughed again.
"I've had ten years of independence; and what has it brought me? The reward of virtue: that swaybacked couch for my bed, Uneeda biscuit for my bread, and for salt--tears of envy!"
"Virtue is its own reward," Lucy enunciated severely.
"Virtue is its only reward, you mean!"
"You don't talk fit to eat."