“He’s handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really great painter,” said Neville, drily.

She looked absently at the melon; tasted it:  “He is very romantic ... when he laughs and shows those beautiful, even teeth....  He’s really quite adorable, Kelly—­and so gentle and considerate—­”

“That’s the Latin in him.”

“His parents were born in New York.”

She sipped her coffee, tried a pigeon egg, inquired what it was, ate it, enchanted.

“How thoroughly nice you always are to me, Kelly!” she said, looking up in the engagingly fearless way characteristic of her when with him.

“Isn’t everybody nice to you?” he said with a shrug which escaped her notice.

“Nice?” She coloured a trifle and laughed.  “Not in your way, Kelly.  In the sillier sense they are—­some of them.”

“Even Querida?” he said, carelessly.

“Oh, just like other men—­generously ready for any event.  What self-sacrificing opportunists men are!  After all, Kelly,” she added, slipping easily into the vernacular, “it’s always up to the girl.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, I think so.  I knew perfectly well that I had no business to let Querida’s arm remain around me.  But—­there was a moon, Kelly.”

“Certainly.”

“Why do you say ’certainly’?”

“Because there was one.”

“But you say it in a manner—­” She hesitated, continued her breakfast in leisurely reflection for a while, then: 

“Louis?”

“Yes.”

“Am I too frank with you?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know; I was just thinking.  I tell you pretty nearly everything.  If I didn’t have you to tell—­have somebody—­” She considered, with brows slightly knitted—­“if I didn’t have somebody to talk to, it wouldn’t be very good for me.  I realise that.”

“You need a grandmother,” he said, drily; “and I’m the closest resemblance to one procurable.”

The imagery struck her as humorous and she laughed.

“Poor Kelly,” she said aloud to herself, “he is used and abused and imposed upon, and in revenge he offers his ungrateful tormentor delicious breakfasts. What shall his reward be?—­or must he await it in Paradise where he truly belongs amid the martyrs and the blessed saints!”

Neville grunted.

“Oh, oh! such a post-Raphaelite scowl!  Job won’t bow to you when you go aloft, Kelly.  Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring torment....  What are you going to do with me to-day?” she added, glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a full-length virgin canvas.

“Portrait,” he replied, tersely.

“Oh,” she said, surprised.  He had never before painted her clothed.

From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a trifle perplexed, too.