Valerie glanced curiously at the girl, who was preparing oysters in the chafing dish.

“How do you happen to know so much about him, Rita?”

She answered, carelessly:  “I have known him ever since I began to pose—­almost.”

Valerie set her cup aside, sprang up to rinse mouth and hands.  Then, gathering her pink negligee around her, curled up in a big wing-chair, drawing her bare feet up under the silken folds and watching Rita prepare the modest repast for one.

“Rita,” she said, “who was the first artist you ever posed for?  Was it John Burleson—­and did you endure the tortures of the damned?”

“No, it was not John Burleson....  And I endured—­enough.”

“Don’t you care to tell me who it was?”

Rita did not reply at that time.  Later, however, when the simple supper was ended, she lighted a cigarette and found a place where, with lamplight behind her, she could read a book which Burleson had sent her, and which she had been attempting to assimilate and digest all winter.  It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds.  It was called “Essays on the Obvious “; and Valerie had made fun of it until, to her surprise, she noticed that her pleasantries annoyed Rita.

Valerie, curled up in the wing-chair, cheek resting against its velvet side, was reading the Psalms again—­fascinated as always by the noble music of the verse.  And it was only by chance that, lifting her eyes absently for a moment, she found that Rita had laid aside her book and was looking at her intently.

“Hello, dear!” she said, indolently humorous.

Rita said:  “You read your Bible a good deal, don’t you?”

“Parts of it.”

“The parts you believe?”

“Yes; and the parts that I can’t believe.”

“What parts can’t you believe?”

Valerie laughed:  “Oh, the unfair parts—­the cruel parts, the inconsistent parts.”

“What about faith?”

“Faith is a matter of temperament, dear.”

“Haven’t you any?”

“Yes, in all things good.”

“Then you have faith in yourself that you are capable of deciding what is good and worthy of belief in the Scriptures, and what is unworthy?”

[Illustration:  “It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds.”]

“It must be that way.  I am intelligent.  One must decide for one’s self what is fair and what is unfair; what is cruel and what is merciful and kind.  Intelligence must always evolve its own religion; sin is only an unfaithfulness to what one really believes.”

“What do you believe, Valerie?”

“About what, dear?”

“Love.”

“Loving a man?”

“Yes.”

“You know what my creed is—­that love must be utterly unselfish to be pure—­to be love at all.”

“One must not think of one’s self,” murmured Rita, absently.