“A friend of many years. But, as you say, what is a woman between friends?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl. And, still clasped in his arms, she bent her head, thoughtfully, considering the question.
And as though she had come to some final conclusion, she raised her head, lifted her eyes slowly, and her lips, to the man whose arms enfolded her. It was her answer to his question, and her own.
When she had gone, he went back and stood again by the great window, watching the cote on a neighboring roof, where the pigeons were strutting and coquetting in the last rays of the western sun.
II
When she came again to the studio, she was different, subdued, evading, avoiding, smiling a little in her flushed diffidence at his gay ease of manner—or assumption of both ease and gaiety.
He was inclined to rally her, tease her, but her reticence was not all embarrassment. The lightest contact, the slightest caress from him, added a seriousness to her face, making it very lovely under its heightened color, and strangely childlike.
Model and master they would have remained no longer had it been for him to say, he desiring now to make it a favor and concession on her part to aid him professionally, she gravely insisting on professionalism as the basis of whatever entente might develop between them, as well as the only avowed excuse for her presence there alone with him.
“Please. It’s respectable,” she insisted her agreeable, modulated voice. “I had rather the reason for my coming here be business—whatever else happens.”