He laughed, stretched his arms: 

“Draw!  A blank canvas sets me mad.  When I look at one I feel like covering it with a thousand figures twisted into every intricacy and difficulty of foreshortening!  I wish I were like that Hindu god with a dozen arms; and even then I couldn’t paint fast enough to satisfy what my eyes and brain have already evoked upon an untouched canvas....  It’s a sort of intoxication that gets hold of me; I’m perfectly cool, too, which seems a paradox but isn’t.  And all the while, inside me, is a constant, hushed kind of laughter, bubbling, which accompanies every brush stroke with an ’I told you so!’—­if you know what I’m trying to say—­do you?”

“N-not exactly.  But I suppose you mean that you are self-confident.”

“Lord!  Listen to this girl say in a dozen words what I’m trying to say in a volume so that it won’t scare me!  Yes!  That’s it.  I am confident.  And it’s that self-confidence which sometimes scares me half to death.”

From his ladder he pointed with his brush to the preliminary sketch that faced her, touching figure after figure: 

“I’m going to draw them in, now,” he said; “first this one.  Can you catch the pose?  It’s going to be hard; I’ll block up your heels, later; that’s it!  Stand up straight, stretch as though the next moment you were going to rise on tiptoe and float upward without an effort—­”

He was working like lightning in long, beautiful, clean outline strokes, brushed here and there with shadow shapes and masses.  And time flew at first, then went slowly, more slowly, until it dragged at her delicate body and set every nerve aching.

“I—­may I rest a moment?”

“Sure thing!” he said, cordially, laying aside palette and brushes.  “Come on, Miss West, and we’ll have luncheon.”

She hastily swathed herself in the wool robe.

“Do you mean—­here?”

“Yes.  There’s a dumb-waiter.  I’ll ring for the card.”

“I’d like to,” she said, “but do you think I had better?”

“Why not?”

“You mean—­take lunch with you?”

“Why not?”

“Is it customary?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Then I think I will go out to lunch somewhere—­”

“I’m not going to let you get away,” he said, laughing.  “You’re too good to be real; I’m worried half to death for fear that you’ll vanish in a golden cloud, or something equally futile and inconsiderate.  No, I want you to stay.  You don’t mind, do you?”

He was aiding her to descend from her eyrie, her little white hand balanced on his arm.  When she set foot on the floor she looked up at him gravely: 

“You wouldn’t let me do anything that I ought not to, would you, Mr. Kelly—­I mean Mr. Neville?” she added in confusion.

“No.  Anyway I don’t know what you ought or ought not to do.  Luncheon is a simple matter of routine.  It’s sole significance is two empty stomachs.  I suppose if you go out you will come back, but—­I’d rather you’d remain.”