Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West.

His even-tempered indifference to others—­an indifference which had always characterised him—­had left only a wider and deeper void now filling with his passion for her.

They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement—­which attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them.

That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger.  At times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her patience.  Again and again she explained to him the unalterable fundamentals of their pact.  These were, first of all, her refusal to alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or after the great change.

That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him.  He did not wish her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her business activity.  But she very patiently explained to him that she found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way.

“I don’t want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy office, dear,” she pleaded.  “I don’t want to sit all day in a library where people whisper about books.  I don’t want to teach in a public school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse and place thermometers in people’s mouths.  I like children pretty well but I don’t want to be a governess and teach other people’s children; I want to be taught myself; I want to learn—­I’m a sort of a child, too, dear; and it’s the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am—­given me what I never had as a child.  You don’t understand, but I’m having my childhood now—­nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, debut—­all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, animated people.”

“Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still pleasanter—­”

And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground.  Because in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her—­for with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late—­that mystery had been responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of a lonely soul.