"Well," she drawled at last, "what did you think of it?"
"Think of it?" said Lewis. "There were three times when I wanted to shout, "Hold that pose!" After that--well, after that my brain stopped working."
"Do you mean it?" asked Vi.
"Mean what?"
"About wanting me to hold a pose."
"Yes," said Lewis; "of course. What of it?"
"What of it? Why, I will. When?"
"Do _you_ mean it?" asked Lewis.
Vi nodded.
"Name your own time."
"To-morrow," said Vi, "at ten."
The following morning Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in corner which previous models had frequently d.a.m.ned as a purely tentative dressing-room. Promptly at ten Vi appeared.
"Where"s your maid?" asked Lewis. "You"ve simply got to have a maid along for this sort of thing."
"You"re wrong," said Vi. "It"s just the sort of thing one doesn"t have a maid for. It"s easier to trust two to keep quiet than to keep a maid from vain imaginings. And--it"s a lot less expensive."
"Well," said Lewis, "where"s your costume?"
"Here," said Vi, "in my recticule."
They laughed. Ten minutes later Vi appeared in her filmy costume.
Lewis"s face no longer smiled. He was sitting on a bench at the farther end of the room, solemnly smoking a pipe. He did not seem to notice that Vi"s whole body was suffused, nervous.
"Dance," said Lewis.
Vi hesitated a moment and then danced, at first a little stiffly. But her mind gradually concentrated on her movements; she began to catch the impersonal working atmosphere of a model.
"Hold that!" cried Lewis, and, a second later: "No, that will never do.
You"ve stiffened. Try again."
Over and over Vi tried to catch the pose and keep it until, without a word, she crossed the room, threw herself on a couch, and began to cry from pure exhaustion. When she had partly recovered, she suddenly awoke to the fact that Lewis had not come to comfort her. She looked up. Lewis was still sitting on the bench. He was filling a fresh pipe.
"Blown over?" he asked casually. "Come on. At it again."
At the end of another half-hour Vi gave up the struggle. She had caught the pose twice, but she had been unable to hold it.
"I give it up," she wailed. "I"ll simply never be able to _stay_ that way."
"If you were a professional dancer," said Lewis, "I"d say "nonsense" to that. But you"re not. I"m afraid it would take you weeks, perhaps months, to get the stamina. Take it easy now while I make some tea."
"Tea in the morning!" said Vi. "I can"t stand it. I"d rather have a gla.s.s of port or something like that."
"I"ve no doubt you would, but you"re not going to get it," said Lewis, calmly, as he went about the business of brewing tea.
Vi finished her first cup, and asked for a second.
"It"s quite a bracer, after all," she said. "I feel a lot better." She rose and went to the model"s throne at one side of the room. "Is this where they stand?" she asked.
Lewis nodded.
Vi climbed the throne, and took a pose. Her face was turned from Lewis, her right arm half outstretched, her left at her side. She was in the act of stepping. Her long left thigh was salient, yet withdrawing. It was the pose of one who leads the way.
"This is the pose you will do me in," she said.
For a moment Lewis was silent, then he said gravely:
"No, you don"t really want me to do you that way."
"I do, and you will," said Vi, without looking around.
For another long moment Lewis was silent.
"All right," he said at last. "Come down. Dress yourself. You"ve had enough for to-day."
CHAPTER x.x.x
Weeks pa.s.sed. Lewis worked steadily at his figure of Vi. From the time the wires had been set and the rough clay slapped on them, he had never allowed her to see the figure.
"It"s no use asking," he said. "You"re no master at this art. The workman who shows unfinished stuff to anybody but a master is a fool."
"Well, when, then?" asked Vi, impatiently, after weeks had lengthened to months.
"Almost any day now," said Lewis; but before "any day" came around, something happened that materially delayed the satisfaction of Vi"s curiosity.
Lady Derl had frequently drafted Lewis into dinners that she thought would be stupid for her without him. As a result, the inevitable in London happened. It became a habit to invite Lewis when Lady Derl was coming. He never took her in,--her rank and position made that impossible,--but he was there, somewhere at the lower end of the table, where she could watch him when she felt bored and occasionally read in the astonished faces of his neighbors the devastation he had caused by some remark; for Lewis, like his father, had a way of saying things. The difference was that Leighton"s _mots_ were natural and malicious, while Lewis"s were only natural. On the whole, Lewis created the greater sensation.
The night after Lewis had said "Almost any day now" to Vi, he found himself at a semi-diplomatic dinner next to a young person who, like himself, seemed to find the affair a bit heavy.
"What did they invite you for?" asked Lewis.
"They couldn"t help it," replied the young person, stifling a yawn. "I"m the wife of the charge of the Brazilian legation. And you?"
"Oh, I"m here just to take Lady Derl home."