“Of course.”

“You don’t say it very kindly.”

“I mean it cordially,” he snapped.  He could hear her sigh:  “I suppose you do.”  Then she added: 

“I am dressing, Kelly.  I don’t wish for any breakfast, and I’ll come to the studio as soon as I can—­”

“Take your breakfast first!”

“No, I really don’t care for—­”

“All right.  Come ahead.”

“I will.  Good-bye, Kelly, dear.”

He rang off, picked up the telephone again, called the great Hotel Regina, and ordered breakfast sent to his studio immediately.

When Valerie arrived she found silver, crystal, and snowy linen awaiting her with chilled grapefruit, African melon, fragrant coffee, toast, and pigeon’s eggs poached on Astrakan caviar.

“Oh, Louis!” she exclaimed, enraptured; “I don’t deserve this—­but it is perfectly dear of you—­and I am hungry!...  Good-morning,” she added, shyly extending a fresh cool hand; “I am really none the worse for wear you see.”

That was plain enough.  In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of the night’s unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under her thick lashes.  Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark eyes unwearied—­her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with health and vigour.

She seated herself—­offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously.

“Y-yes....  It was a silly sort of a time.”

“Silly?”

“I was rather sentimental—­with Querida.”

He said nothing—­grimly.

“I told you last night, Louis.  Why couldn’t you see me?”

“I was dining out; I couldn’t.”

She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively: 

“I hadn’t seen you for a week,” she laughed, glancing sideways at him, “and that lonely feeling began about five o’clock; and I called you up at seven because I couldn’t stand it....  But you wouldn’t see me; and so when Rita and the others came in a big touring car—­do you blame me very much for going with them?”

“No.”

Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing: 

“My room isn’t very attractive,” she said, timidly.  “It is scarcely big enough for the iron bed and one chair—­and I get so tired trying to read or sew every evening by the gas—­and it’s very hot in there.”

“Are you making excuses for going?”

“I do not know....  Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it—­it is not very gay.”

She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her smile came back: 

“Louis, it was a funny party.  To begin we had one of those terrible clambakes—­like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages—­and it did not agree with everybody—­or perhaps it was because we weren’t middle-aged—­or perhaps it was just the beer.  I drank water; so did the beautiful Jose Querida....  I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest man I ever saw; don’t you?”