What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis Neville?  The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and personal neglect of the other phase?  Would he be god enough to be less to her, now?  Man enough to be more than other men?  For a moment she had a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like other men.  But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not.  Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into.

She thought to herself:  “If I want Kelly to lean on, he’ll surely appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis to torment and provoke and flirt with—­a little—­a very little—­I’m quite sure he’ll come, too.  Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I don’t know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I’m happy when I’m with him.”

With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came around to look at the canvas.

As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little nervously, what she thought of it.

“Louis—­I don’t know.”

“Is your opinion unfavourable?”

“N-no.  I am like that, am I not?”

“In a shadowy way.  It will be like you.”

“Am I as—­interesting?”

“More so,” he said.

“Are you going to make me—­beautiful?”

“Yes—­or cut this canvas into shreds.”

“Oh-h!” she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; “would you have the heart to destroy me after you’ve made me?”

“I don’t know what I’d do, Valerie.  I never felt just this way about anything.  If I can’t paint you—­a human, breathing you—­with all of you there on the canvas—­all of you, soul, mind, and body—­all of your beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness—­your errors, your nobility—­you, Valerie!—­then there’s no telling what I’ll do.”

She said nothing.  Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting.

It became very still in the sunny studio.

CHAPTER IV

In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint.  And when he realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him.  Something—­he didn’t understand what—­had suddenly left him satiated—­and with all the uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could force no further.

He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie.  For the first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission left him untempted, unresponsive, weary.

He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue.  He continued it mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a brush to it.