and there was a shrewd flash in her eyes.

“I’ll back you up,” said he. “So you needn’t worry. Falling in love is entirely out of my line.”

He saw that she had no more belief in this than the next woman would have had. For, little though he knew about women—the realities as to women, the intricacies of women—he had not failed to learn that[29] every young or youngish woman regards herself as an expert at compelling men to love, as a certain victor whenever she cares to exert herself to win. “You have your career, I mine,” he went on. “They have nothing in common. So we needn’t waste time worrying about impossibilities.”

[29]

“That’s true,” exclaimed she with enthusiasm.

He changed the subject to safer things, acting as if the whole matter of their relations were settled. But, in reality, he was profoundly disturbed. If the scheme of his picture had not taken such firm hold upon him—the hold that compels an artist, in face of any debt to consequences, however heavy—he would have contrived to rid himself of her that day for good and all. He had had too many adventures not to know the dangers filling the woodland in the springtime for a young man and a young woman with no one to interrupt. He did not like his own interest in her; he was little reassured by her explanations as to her interest in him, though he told himself he must be careful not to judge American girls by foreign standards. But the picture must be made, and she was indispensable.

The bright weather held for several days. Every morning artist and model met near the cascade and worked and talked alternately until toward lunch time.[30] She came earlier and earlier, until it was hardly six when her canoe shot round the bend which divided off that end of the lake into a little bay. He was always there before her. “Do you spend the night here?” she asked.

[30]

“Why, this is late for me,” he replied. “I have breakfast before sunrise and go up to the studio for an hour’s work before I come down here. You see, light—sunlight—is all-important with me. So I go to bed with the chickens.”

“You don’t live at the studio?” Then she reddened and hastily cried: “No—don’t answer. I forgot.”

At her suggestion they had been careful about letting slip things that might betray their identity in the outside world. This had become a fetich 

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