“I declare,” he said, looking down at her contritely, “I never meant to keep you all this time.  Good Lord!  Have I been puttering up here for an hour and a half!  It’s nearly eight o’clock!  Why on earth didn’t you speak to me, Valerie?”

“It’s a braver girl than I am who’ll venture to interrupt you at work, Kelly,” she said, laughingly.  “I’m a little afraid of you.”

“Nonsense!  I wasn’t doing anything.  My Heaven!—­can it be eight o’clock?”

“It is....  You said we were going to have tea.”

“Tea!  Child, you can’t have tea at eight o’clock!  I’m terribly sorry”—­he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth—­“I’m humiliated and ashamed, Miss West.  Wait a moment—­”

He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter’s linen blouse for his street coat, and came back into the dim studio.

“I’m really sorry, Valerie,” he said.  “It was rotten rude of me.”

“So am I sorry.  It’s absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable kid about it....  You never before asked me—­and I—­wanted to—­stay—­so much—­”

“Why didn’t you remind me, you foolish child!”

“Somehow I couldn’t....  I wanted you to think of it.”

“Well, I’m a chump....”  He stood before her in the dim light; she still reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook’d over her head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned outward, resting across her forehead.

For a few moments neither spoke; then: 

“I’m horridly lonely to-night,” she said, abruptly.

“Why, Valerie!  What a—­an unusual—­”

“I want to talk to you....  I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk now.”

“N-no, I’m not.”  He began to laugh:  “What’s the matter, Valerie?  What is on your mind?  Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, pretty girl?”

“Spoiled, Kelly.  There’s nothing really the matter.  I just felt like—­what you asked me to do—­”

She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation:  “I don’t know what I’m saying—­except that it’s rather rude of me—­and I’ve got to go home.  Good-night—­I think my hat is in the dressing-room—­”

He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk.

When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him with composure: 

“Some day ask me again.  I really would like it—­if you would.”

“Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a cup of weak tea with me,” he said, jestingly—­“after all those jolly dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?”

She nodded and held out her hand with decision: