“Have you any intimate friends?”

“Well—­perhaps not—­in the strict sense.  I don’t confide.”

“Have you never cared, very much, for anybody—­any woman?”

“Not sentimentally,” he returned, laughing.  “Do you think that a good course of modern flirtation—­a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively occult quality they’re all howling for?”

She remained smilingly silent.

“Perhaps something less strenuous would do,” he said, mischievously—­“a pretty amourette?—­just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra fashionable.  Do you think that would help some, Valerie?”

She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly embarrassed: 

“I don’t think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. Neville....  Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner?  I’m dreadfully hungry.”

“You poor little girl, of course I am.  Besides, you must be suffering under the terrible suppression of that ‘thorough talk’ which you—­”

“It doesn’t really require a thorough talk,” she said; “I’ll tell you now what I had to say.  No, don’t interrupt, please!  I want to—­please let me—­so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the gay world around us when we are dining....  It is this:  Sometimes—­once in a while—­I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, temporarily.  And—­will you let me telephone you at such times?—­just to talk to you—­perhaps see you for a minute?”

“Of course.  You know my telephone number.  Call me up whenever you like.”

“Could I see you at such moments?  I—­there’s a—­some—­a kind of sentiment about me—­when I’m very lonely; and I’ve been foolish enough to let one or two men see it—­in fact I’ve been rather indiscreet—­silly—­with a man—­several men—­now and then.  A lonely girl is easily sympathised with—­and rather likes it; and is inclined to let herself go a little....  I don’t want to....  And at times I’ve done it....  Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn’t count—­does it?  But I let Harry Annan do it, once....  If I’m weak enough to drift into such silliness I’d better find a safeguard.  I’ve been thinking—­thinking—­that it really does originate in a sort of foolish loneliness ...not in anything worse.  So I thought I’d have a thorough talk with you about it.  I’m twenty-one—­with all my experience of life and of men crowded into a single winter and spring.  I have as friends only the few people I have met through you.  I have nobody to see unless I see them—­nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me....  So I thought I’d ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes—­as a refuge from isolation and morbid thinking now and then.  And from other mischief—­for which I apparently have a capacity—­to judge by what I’ve done—­and what I’ve let men do already.”