[Illustration: "Ogilvy … began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary adversary.">[
The girl stood silent, eyes lowered. After a while she looked up at him; and in her unfaltering but sorrowful gaze he read the tragedy which he had long since suspected.
Neither spoke for a moment; he held out both hands; she laid hers in them, and her gaze became remote.
After a while she said in a low voice:
"Let me be with you now and then while he's away; will you, Kelly?"
"Yes. Would you like to pose for me? I haven't anything pressing on hand. You might begin now if it suits you."
"May I?" she asked gratefully.
"Of course, child…. Let me think—" He looked again into her dark blue eyes, absently, then suddenly his attention became riveted upon something which he seemed to be reading in her face.
Long before Sam and Harry had ended their puppy-like scuffling and had retired to woo their respective deputy-muses, Rita was seated on the model-stand, and Neville had already begun that strange and sombre picture afterward so famous, and about which one of the finest of our modern poets wrote:
"Her gold hair, fallen about her face
Made light within that shadowy place,
But on her garments lay the dust
Of many a vanished race.