She ceased, bent her head thoughtfully.

“You want—­friends?  Young ones—­with intellects?  You want to combine these with a chance of making a decent living?”

“Yes.”  She looked up candidly:  “I am simply starved for it.  You must believe that when you see what I have submitted to—­gone through with in your studio”—­she blushed vividly—­“in a—­a desperate attempt to escape the—­the loneliness, the silence and isolation”—­she raised her dark eyes—­“the isolation of the poor,” she said.  “You don’t know what that means.”

After a moment she added, level-eyed:  “For which there is supposed to be but one outlet—­if a girl is attractive.”

He rose, walked to and fro for a few moments, then, halting: 

“All memory of the initial terror and distress and uncertainty aside, have you not enjoyed this morning, Miss West?”

“Yes, I—­have.  I—­you have no idea what it has meant to me.”

“It has given you an outlook, anyway.”

“Yes....  Only—­I’m terrified at the idea of going through it again—­with another man—­”

He laughed, and she tried to, saying: 

“But if all artists are as kind and considerate—­”

“Plenty of ’em are more so.  There are a few bounders, a moderate number of beasts.  You’ll find them everywhere in the world from the purlieus to the pulpit....  I’m going to make a contract with you.  After that, regretfully, I’ll see that you meet the men who will be valuable to you....  I wish there was some way I could box you up in a jeweller’s case so that nobody else could have you and I could find you when I needed you!”

She laughed shyly, extended her slim white hand for him to support her while she mounted to her eyrie.  Then, erect, delicately flushed, she let the robe fall from her and stood looking down at him in silence.

CHAPTER II

Spring came unusually early that year.  By the first of the month a few willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of clipped verdure in its wake.

Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship.

Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made endless nuisances of themselves all day long.

In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter’s pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with, pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile.