“Puttyish!” cried Vi, a flush of anger rising to her face.  “Grapes, you’re brutal!  Since when have you learned to trample on a woman?”

“That’s better,” said Leighton, coolly.  “I thought it would rouse you a bit.”

Vi almost smiled at herself.  She laid her hand on Leighton’s arm and turned him toward the door.

“And they still say that no man knows women,” she said.  She paused and looked back at the fragments of the statue.  Her lips twisted.  “Even boys,” she added, “pick out our naked souls and slap them in our faces.”

As they walked slowly toward the flat, Vi said: 

“I know why you had to ask that question.  I’m glad you did.  You were misjudging Lew.  But you can be sure of one thing:  no one but us three ever saw that statue; I know now that no one but just Lew and myself were ever meant to see it.  He didn’t want to model me that way.  When I asked for it, he hesitated, then suddenly he gave in.”  She paused for a moment, then she added, “I believe it’s part of a man’s job to know when to trample on women.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

It was night at the flat.  There was just chill enough in the air to justify a cozy little fire.  Through the open windows came the low hum of London, subdued by walls and distance to the pitch of a friendly accompaniment to talk.  In two great leathern chairs, half facing each other, Vi and Leighton sat down, the fire between them.

They had been silent for a long time.  Vi had been twisting her fingers, staring at them.  Her lips were half open and mobile.  She was even flushed.  Suddenly she locked her hands and leaned forward.

“Grapes,” she said without a drawl, “I have seen myself.  It is terrible.  Nothing is left.”

Leighton rose and stepped into his den.  He came back slowly with two pictures in his hands.

“Look at these,” he said.  “If you were ten years older, you’d only have to glance at them, and they’d open a door to memory.”

Vi gazed at the pictures, small paintings of two famous Spanish dancers.  One was beautiful, languorous, carnal; the other was neither languorous nor carnal despite her wonderful body, and she was certainly not beautiful.  Vi laid the second picture down and held the first.  Then almost unconsciously she reached out her hand for the discarded picture.  Gradually the face that was not beautiful drew her until attention grew into absorption.  The portrait of the languorous beauty fell to her lap and then slipped to the floor, face down.  Leighton laughed.

Vi glanced up.

“Why?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” said Leighton, “except that the effect those pictures had on you is an exact parallel to the way the two originals influenced men.  For that——­” Leighton waved a hand at the picture on the floor—­“men gave all they possessed in the way of worldly goods, and then Wondered why they’d done it.  But for her—­the one you ’re looking at——­”