He shrugged and looked up at the outlined men’s figures partly covering the canvas above them.  Her gaze followed his, then again she raised herself on one elbow and looked around her, searching with quick eyes among the shadows.

“Where is my portrait?”

“Behind the tapestry.”

“Have you abandoned it?”

“I don’t know.”

Her smile became tremulous:  “Are you going to abandon the original, too?”

“I never possessed very much of you, did I?” he said, sulkily; and looked up at her quick exclamation of anger and surprise.

“What do you mean?  You had all of me worth having—­” there came a quick catch, in her throat—­“you had all there is to me—­confidence in you, gratitude for your friendship, deep, happy response to your every mood—­my unquestioning love and esteem—­”

“Your love?” he repeated, with an unpleasant laugh.

“What else do you call it?” she demanded, fiercely.  “Is there a name less hackneyed for it?  If there is, teach it to me.  Yet—­if ever a girl truly loved a man, I have loved you.  And I do love you, dearly, honestly, cleanly, without other excuse than that, until to-night, you have been sweet to me and made me happier and better than I have ever been.”

He sprang to his feet confused, deeply moved, suddenly ashamed of his own inexplicable attitude that seemed to be driving him into a bitterness that had no reason.

“Valerie,” he began, but she interrupted him: 

“I ask you, Kelly, to look back with me over our brief and happy companionship—­over the hours together, over all you have done for me—­”

“Have you done less for me?”

“I?  What have I done?”

“You say you have given me—­love.”

“I have—­with all my heart and soul.  And, now that I think of it, I have given you more—­I have given you all that goes with love—­an unselfish admiration; a quick sympathy in your perplexities; quiet solicitude in your silences, in your aloof and troubled moments.”  She leaned nearer, a brighter flush on either cheek: 

“Louis, I have given you more than that; I gave you my bodily self for your work—­gave it to you first of all—­came first of all to you—­came as a novice, ignorant, frightened—­and what you did for me then—­what you were to me at that time—­I can never, never forget.  And that is why I overlook your injustice to me now!”

She sat up on the sofa’s edge balanced forward between her arms, fingers nervously working at the silken edges of the upholstery.

“You ought never to have doubted my interest and affection,” she said.  “In my heart I have not doubted yours—­never—­except to-night.  And it makes me perfectly wretched.”

“I did not mean—­”

“Yes, you did!  There was something about you—­your expression—­when you saw me throwing roses at everybody—­that hurt me—­and you meant to.”