“Y-yes.  Only a mention.”

“Was it a portrait?”

“Yes—­in a way.”

“What was it?  Just a girl?”

“Yes.”

“Who was she?”

“Oh, just a girl——­”

“Was she pretty?”

“Yes.  Shall we dance this next——­”

“No.  Was she a model?”

“She posed——­”

Geraldine, lips on the edge of her spread fan, regarded him curiously.

“That is a very romantic life, isn’t it?” she murmured.

“What?”

“Yours.  I don’t know much about it; Kathleen took me to hear ’La Boheme’; and I found Murger’s story in the library.  I have also read ‘Trilby.’  Did you—­were you—­was life like that when you studied in the Latin Quarter?”

He laughed.  “Not a bit.  I never saw that species of life off the stage.”

“Oh, wasn’t there any romance?” she asked forlornly.

“Well—­as much as you find in New York or anywhere.”

“Is there any romance in New York?”

“There is anywhere, isn’t there?  If only one has the instinct to recognise it and a capacity to comprehend it.”

“Of course,” she murmured, “there are artists and studios and models and poverty everywhere....  I suppose that without poverty real romance is scarcely possible.”

He was still laughing when he answered: 

“Financial conditions make no difference.  Romance is in one’s self—­or it is nowhere.”

“Is it in—­you?” she asked audaciously.

He made no pretence of restraining his mirth.

“Why, I don’t know, Geraldine.  Lots of people have the capacity for it.  Poverty, art, a studio, a velvet jacket, and models are not essentials....  You ask if it is in me.  I think it is.  I think it exists in anybody who can glorify the commonplace.  To make people look with astonished interest at something which has always been too familiar to arrest their attention—­only your romancer can accomplish this.”

“Please go on,” she said as he ended.  “I’m listening very hard.  You are glorifying commonplaces, you know.”

They both laughed; he, a little red, disconcerted, piqued, and withal charmed at her dainty thrust at himself.

“I was talking commonplaces,” he admitted, “but how was I to know enough not to?  Women are usually soulfully receptive when a painter opens a tin of mouldy axioms....  I didn’t realise I was encountering my peer——­”

“You may be encountering more than that,” she said, the excitement of her success with him flushing her adorably.

“Oh, I’ve heard how terribly educated you and Scott are.  No doubt you can floor me on anything intellectual.  See here, Geraldine, it’s simply wicked!—­you are so soft and pretty, and nobody could suspect you of knowing such a lot and pouncing out on a fellow for trying a few predigested platitudes on you——­”

“I don’t know anything, Duane!  How perfectly horrid of you!”