At that the girl's brown eyes flew wide open:
"Good Heavens!" she said; "did Steve expect you? She never said a word to me! I thought you were a fixture in Europe!"
He sat biting the end of his cigarette, not looking at her:
"She didn't expect me," he said, flinging the half-burned cigarette into the silver slop-dish of the tea service. "I didn't notify her that I was coming."
Helen Davis dropped one elbow on the modelling table, rested her rounded chin in her palm, and bent her eyes on Cleland. Smoke from the cigarette between her fingers mounted in a straight, thin band to the ceiling.
"So you are Steve's Jim," she mused aloud. "I recognize you now, from your photographs, only you're older and thinner—and you wear a moustache.... You've been away a long while, haven't you?"
"Too long," he said, casting a sombre look at her.
"Oh, do you feel that way? How odd it will seem to you to see Steve again. She's such a darling! Quite wonderful, Mr. Cleland. The artists' colony in New York raves over her."
"Does it?" he said drily.
"Everybody does. She's so amusing, so clever, so full of talent and animation—like a beautiful and mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes with vitality and the sheer joy of living. She never is in low spirits or depressed. That's what fascinates everybody—her gaiety and energy and high spirits. I knew her in college and she wasn't quite that way then. Perhaps because she hated college. But she could be a perfect little devil if she wanted to. She can be that still."