“Can’t you spare me an hour now and then?”

“Y—­yes; I’ll try.”

There was a silence.  The mantel clock struck, and Valerie glanced up.  Helene d’Enver rose, stood still a moment, then stepped forward and took both of Valerie’s hands: 

“Can’t we be friends?  I do need one; and I like you so much.  You’ve the eyes that make a woman easy.  There are none like yours in New York.”

Valerie laughed, uncertainly.

“Your friends wouldn’t care for me,” she said.  “I don’t believe there is any real place at all for me in this city except among the few men and women I already know.”

“Won’t you include me among the number?  There is a place for you in my heart.”

Touched and surprised, the girl stood looking at the older woman in silence.

“May I drive you to your destination?” asked Helene gently.

“You are very kind....  It is Mr. Burleson’s studio—­if it won’t take you too far out of your way.”

By the end of March Valerie had driven with the Countess d’Enver once or twice; and once or twice had been to see her, and had met, in her apartment, men and women who were inclined to make a fuss over her—­men like Carrillo and Dennison, and women like Mrs. Hind-Willet and Mrs. Atherstane.  It was her unconventional profession that interested them.

To Neville, recounting her experiences, she said with a patient little smile: 

“It’s rather nice to be liked and to have some kind of a place among people who live in this city.  Nobody seems to mind my being a model.  Perhaps they have taken merely a passing fancy to me and are exhibiting me to each other as a wild thing just captured and being trained—­” She laughed—­“but they do it so pleasantly that I don’t mind....  And anyway, the Countess d’Enver is genuine; I am sure of that.”

“A genuine countess?”

“A genuine woman, sincere, lovable, and kind—­I am becoming very fond of her....  Do you mind my abandoning you for an afternoon now and then?  Because it is nice to have as a friend a woman older and more experienced.”

“Does that mean you’re going off with her this afternoon?”

“I was going.  But I won’t if you feel that I’m deserting you.”

He laid aside his palette and went over to where she was standing.

“You darling,” he said, “go and drive in the Park with your funny little friend.”

“She was going to take me to the Plaza for tea.  There are to be some very nice women there who are interested in the New Idea Home.”  She added, shyly, “I have subscribed ten dollars.”

He kissed her, lightly, humorously.  “And what, sweetheart, may the New Idea Home be?”

“Oh, it’s an idea of Mrs. Hind-Willet’s about caring for wayward girls.  Mrs. Willet thinks that it is cruel and silly to send them into virtual imprisonment, to punish them and watch them and confront them at every turn with threats and the merciless routine of discipline.  She thinks that the thing to do is to give them a chance for sensible and normal happiness; not to segregate them one side of a dead line; not to treat them like criminals to be watched and doubted and suspected.”