Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly flushed features.  There was a very indefinite family resemblance.

“Miss West,” she said, “it is amiable of you to overlook the informality—­”

“I am not formal, Mrs. Collis,” she said, quietly.  “Will you sit here?” indicating an arm-chair near the window,—­“because the light is not very good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in this afternoon.”

Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north window.

“I am sure you will not mind my sewing,” she said, with a slight upward inflection to her voice, which made it a question.

“Please, Miss West,” said Lily, hastily.

“It is really a necessity,” observed Valerie threading her needle and turning over the skirt.  “Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a model’s failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable contract to them, and that isn’t fair either to them or to their publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last moment.”

“Your—­profession—­must be an exceedingly interesting one,” said Lily in a low voice.

Valerie smiled:  “It is a very exacting one.”

There was a silence.  Valerie’s head was bent over her sewing; Mrs. Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her eyes from her.  Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual consternation.

She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and beauty—­but not for this kind—­not for the loveliness, the grace, the composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing there before her.

She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model hired to pose for men—­paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and body!  Yet—­could it be possible!  Was this the girl hailed as a comrade by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan—­the heroine of a score of unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them?  Was this the coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her in addition to the entire social structure?

Very quietly the girl raised her head.  Her sensitive lips were edged with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes: 

“Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your letter and my answer to it.  I did not mean to embarrass you by not speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me.”