“Posing?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

“Why, I only mean that—­the other”—­she smiled—­“what you call the bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me....  I was a show-girl for two months last winter; I ought to know.  And I’d rather have died than—­”

“I see,” he said; “that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you.”

She nodded.  “Besides, I have principles,” she said, candidly.

“Which effectually blocked that outlet.  They sometimes kill, too, as you say.  Youth stifled too long means death—­the death of youth at least.  Outlets mean life.  The idea is to find a safe one.”

She flushed in quick, sensitive response: 

“That is it; that is what I meant.  Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and do you know I never had a childhood?  And I am simply wild for it—­for the girlhood and the playtime that I never had—­”

She checked herself, looking across at him uncertainly.

“Go on,” he nodded.

“That is all.”

“No; tell me the rest.”

She sat with head bent, slender fingers picking at her napkin; then, without raising her troubled eyes: 

“Life has been—­curious.  My mother was bedridden.  My childhood and girlhood were passed caring for her.  That is all I ever did until—­a year ago,” she added, her voice falling so low he could scarcely hear her.

“She died, then?”

“A year ago last February.”

“You went to school.  You must have made friends there.”

“I went to a public school for a year.  After that mother taught me.”

“She must have been extremely cultivated.”

The girl nodded, looking absently at the cloth.  Then, glancing up: 

“I wonder whether you will understand me when I tell you why I decided to ask employment of artists.”

“I’ll try to,” he said, smiling.

“It was an intense desire to be among cultivated people—­if only for a few hours.  Besides, I had read about artists; and their lives seemed so young, so gay, so worth living—­please don’t think me foolish and immature, Mr. Neville—­but I was so stifled, so cut off from such people, so uninspired, so—­so starved for a little gaiety—­and I needed youthful companionship—­surroundings where people of my own age and intelligence sometimes entered—­and I had never had it—­”

She looked at him with a strained, wistful expression as though begging him to understand her: 

“I couldn’t remain at the theatre,” she said.  “I had little talent—­no chance except chances I would not tolerate; no companionship except what I was unfitted for by education and inclination....  The men were—­impossible.  There may have been girls I could have liked—­but I did not meet them.  So, as I had to do something—­and my years of seclusion with mother had unfitted me for any business—­for office work or shop work—­I thought that artists might care to employ me—­might give me—­or let me see—­be near—­something of the gayer, brighter, more pleasant and youthful side of life—­”