“You!  No confidence?  How absurd!”

“It’s true,” he said a little sullenly.

“You are having a spasm of progressive development,” she said, calmly.  “You take it as a child takes teething—­with a squirm and a mental howl instead of a physical yell.”

He laughed.  “I suppose it’s something of that sort.  But there’s more—­a self-distrust amounting to self-disgust at moments....  Stephanie, I want to do something good—­”

“You have—­dozens of times.”

“People say so.  The world forgets what is really good—­” he made a nervous gesture—­“always before us poor twentieth-century men looms the goal guarded by the vast, austere, menacing phantoms of the Masters.”

[Illustration:  “‘I know it is you.  Is it?’”]

“Nobody ever won a race looking behind him,” she Said, gaily; “let ’em menace and loom!”

He laughed in a half-hearted fashion, then his head fell again slowly, and he sat there brooding, silent.

“Louis, why are you always dissatisfied?”

“I always will be, I suppose.”  His discontented gaze grew more vague.

“Can you never learn to enjoy the moment?”

“It goes too quickly, and there are so many others which promise more, and will never fulfil their promise; I know it.  We painters know it when we dare to think clearly.  It is better not to think too clearly—­better to go on and pretend to expect attainment....  Stephanie, sometimes I wish I were in an honest business—­selling, buying—­and could close up shop and go home to pleasant dreams.”

“Can’t you?”

“No.  It’s eternal obsession.  A painter’s work is never ended.  It goes on with some after they are asleep; and then they go crazy,” he added, and laughed and laid his hand lightly and unthinkingly over hers where it rested on the arm of her chair.  And he remained unaware of her delicate response to the contact.

The stars were clear and liquid-bright, swarming in myriads in the June sky.  A big meteor fell, leaving an incandescent arc which faded instantly.

“I wonder what time it is,” Be said.

“You mustn’t miss your train, must you?”

“No.” ...  Suddenly it struck him that it would be one o’clock before he could get to the studio and call up Valerie.  That would be too late.  He couldn’t awake her just for the pleasure of talking to her.  Besides, he was sure to see her in the morning when she came to him for her portrait....  Yet—­yet—­he wanted to talk to her....  There seemed to be no particular reason for this desire.

“I think I’ll just step to the telephone a moment.”  He rose, and her fingers dropped from his hand.  “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all,” she smiled.  “The stars are very faithful friends.  I’ll be well guarded until you come back, Louis.”

What she said, for some reason, made him slightly uncomfortable.  He was thinking of her words as he called up “long distance” and waited.  Presently Central called him with a brisk “Here’s your party!” And very far away he heard her voice: