The Common Law

sallow, pallid pie—
And cooked a scheme to marry her,
And hired a hack to carry her
To stately Harlem-by-the-Bronx,
Where now the lonely taxi honks—"

"Kelly!" she gasped.

They both were laughing so that they hastened their steps, fearful of offending, and barely contrived to compose their features when making their adieux to Mrs. Hind-Willet and the Countess d'Enver.

As they walked east along Fifty-ninth Street, breathing in the fresh, sparkling evening air, she said impulsively:

"And to think, Louis, that if I had been wicked enough to marry you I'd have driven you into that kind of society—or into something genetically similar!"

His face sobered:

"You could hold your own in any society."

"Perhaps I could. But they wouldn't let me."

"Are you afraid to fight it out?"

"Yes, dear—at your expense. Otherwise—" She gazed smilingly into space, a slight colour in either cheek.

CHAPTER XI

Valerie West was twenty-two years old in February. One year of life lay behind her; her future stretched away into sunlit infinity.

Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly forward through the sea of life that the shallows were already passed, the last shoal was deepening rapidly. Only immeasurable and menacing depths remained between him and the horizon—that pale, dead line dividing the noonday of to-day from the phantom suns of blank eternity.

It was that winter that he began the picture destined to fix definitely his position among the painters of his times—began it humbly, yet somehow aware of what it was to be; afraid, for all his courage, yet conscious of something inevitable impending. It was Destiny; and, instinctively, he arose to meet it.

He called the picture "A Bride." A sapphire sky fading to turquoise, in which great clouds crowded high in argent splendour—a young girl naked of feet, her snowy body cinctured at the waist with straight and silvered folds, standing amid a riot of wild flowers, head slightly dropped back, white arms inert, pendant. And in her eyes' deep velvet depths the mystery of the Annunciation.

All of humanity and of maturity—of adolescence and of divinity was in that face; in the exquisitely sensitive wisdom of the woman's eyes, in the full sweet innocence of the childish mouth—in the smooth little hands so unsoiled, so pure—in the nun-like pallor and slender beauty of the throat.

Whatever had been his inspiration—whether spiritual conviction, or the physical beauty of Valerie, neither he nor she considered very deeply. But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of life.

Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie.

Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald, jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious.

"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do."

Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron.

"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie; "this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy ties, singing, 'Oh la—la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game! Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either—or even any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot—a tea-pot!" he repeated in unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!"

Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on with her portrait.

"Get out of here, Sandy," he said—"or take Stephanie into the rest of the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes."

Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress, and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the light.

"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?"

Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around.

"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is she, Louis?"

"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished him.

Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedly at the portrait of Valerie West, her furs trailing from one shoulder to the chair.

"My eye and Betty Martin!" cried Cameron, "I'll take it all back, girls! It's a real studio after all—and this is the real thing! Louis, do you think she's seen the Aquarium? I'm disengaged after three o'clock—"

He began to kiss his hand rapidly in the direction of the portrait, and then, fondly embracing his own walking stick, he took a few jaunty steps in circles, singing "Waltz me around again, Willy."

Lily Collis said: "If your model is as lovely as her portrait, Louis, she is a real beauty. Who is she?"

"A professional model." He could scarcely contain his impatience with his sister, with Cameron's fat humour, with Stephanie's quiet and intent scrutiny—as though, somehow, he had suddenly exposed Valerie herself to the cool and cynically detached curiosity of a world which she knew must always remain unfriendly to her.

He was perfectly aware that his sister had guessed whose portrait confronted them; he supposed, too, that Stephanie probably suspected. And the knowledge irritated him more than the clownishness of Cameron.

"It is a splendid piece of painting," said Stephanie cordially, and turned quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture; that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased him—was even paining him.

"Sandy," she said cheerfully, "come here and help me look over these sketches."

"Any peaches among 'em?"

"Bushels."

Cameron came with alacrity; Neville waited until Lily reluctantly resumed her seat; then he pushed back the easel, turned Valerie's portrait to the wall, and quietly resumed his painting.

Art in any form was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with characteristic observations.

"Well, I've got business down town," he exclaimed, with great pretence of regret. "Come on, Stephanie; we'll go to the Exchange and start something. Shall we? Oh, anything—from a panic to a bull-market! I don't care; go as far as you like. You may wreck a few railroads if you want to. Only I've got to go…. Awfully good of you to let me—er—see all these—er—interesting and er—m-m-m—things, Louis. Glad I saw that dream of a peacherino, too. What is she on the side? An actorine? If she is I'll take a box for the rest of the season including the road and one-night stands…. Good-bye, Mrs. Collis! Good-bye, Stephanie! Good-bye, Louis!—I'll come and spend the day with you when you're too busy to see me. Now, Stephanie, child! It's the Stock Exchange or the Little Church around the Corner for you and me, if you say so!"

Stephanie had duties at a different sort of an Exchange; and she also took her leave, thanking Neville warmly for the pleasure she had had, and promising to lunch with Lily at the Continental Club.

When they had departed, Lily said:

"I suppose that is a portrait of your model, Valerie West."

"Yes," he replied shortly.

"Well, Louis, it is perfectly absurd of you to show so plainly that you consider our discovery of it a desecration."

He turned red with surprise and irritation: