“Ah,” she said, “it’s Infant Damnation himself! So you have come.”
“Yes,” he said, “I have come.”
“Well, step in. Don’t stand in the hall and wake the neighbors.”
He found himself inside the studio; the incense, the mellow lights, the warmth, the magnificence of it all left him incapable of speech. Then he remembered why he had come and thrust the book out at her.
“I could not sleep in the same house with this thing,” he said. She shrugged her shoulders and carelessly dropped the book on the tiger-skin rug. A Swiss cuckoo clock proclaimed that it was ten. Edwin shuddered; two hours to midnight . . . and the streets.
“Well, let’s begin,” said Valerie Keat, picking up a palette.
“Begin to what?” he asked, tremulously.
“I to paint,” she answered; “you to pose.”
“But, merciful Heavens, Miss Keat, you don’t think I came here for . . . that?”
“Then what did you come for?” Her eyes narrowed.