“I’ll paint you that way! Don’t stir,” said the young fellow pleasantly. “Just stand where you are, Dulcie. You’re quite all right as you are – ” He lifted a half-length canvas, placed it on his heavy easel and clamped it.

“I feel exactly like painting,” he continued, busy with his brushes and colours. “I’m full of it to-day. It’s in me. It’s got to come out… And you certainly are an interesting subject – with your big grey eyes and bobbed red hair – oh, quite interesting constructively, too – as well as from the colour point.”

He finished setting his palette, gathered up a handful of brushes:

“I won’t bother to draw you except with a brush – ”

He looked across at her, remained looking, the pleasantly detached expression of his features gradually changing to curiosity, to the severity of increasing interest, to concentrated and silent absorption.

“Dulcie,” he presently concluded, “you are so unusually interesting and paintable that you make me think very seriously… And I’m hanged if I’m going to waste you by slapping a technically adequate sketch of you onto this nice new canvas … which might give me pleasure while I’m doing it … and 98 might even tickle my vanity for a week … and then be laid away to gather dust … and be covered over next year and used for another sketch… No… No!.. You’re worth more than that!”

He began to pace the place to and fro, thinking very hard, glancing around at her from moment to moment, where she stood, obediently immovable on the blue meshed rug, clasping the Prophet to her breast.

“Do you want to become my private model?” he demanded abruptly. “I mean seriously. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“I mean a real model, from whom I can ask anything?”

“Oh, yes, please,” pleaded the girl, trembling a little.

“Do you understand what it means?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes you’ll be required to wear few clothes. Sometimes none. Did you know that?”

“Yes. Mr. Westmore asked me once.”

“You didn’t care to?”

“Not for him.”

“You don’t mind doing it for me?”

“I’ll do anything you ask me,” she said, trying to smile and shivering with excitement.

“All right. It’s a bargain. You’re my model, Dulcie. When do you graduate from school?”

“In June.”

“Two months! Well – all right. Until then it will be a half day through the week, and all day Saturdays and Sundays, if I require you. You’ll have a weekly salary – ” He smiled and mentioned the figure, and the girl blushed vividly. She had, it appeared, expected nothing.

“Why, Dulcie!” he exclaimed, immensely amused. 99 “You didn’t intend to come here and give me all your time for nothing, did you?”

“Yes.”

“But why on earth should you do such a thing for me?”

She found no words to explain why.

“Nonsense,” he continued; “you’re a business woman now. Your father will have to find somebody to cook for him and take the desk when he’s out at Grogan’s. Don’t worry; I’ll fix it with him… By the way, Dulcie, supposing you sit down.”

She found a chair and took the Prophet onto her lap.

“Now, this will be very convenient for me,” he went on, inspecting her with increasing satisfaction. “If I ever have any orders – any sitters – you can have a vacation, of course. Otherwise, I’ll always have an interesting model at hand – I’ve got chests full of wonderful costumes – genuine ones – ” He fell silent, his eyes studying her. Already he was planning half a dozen pictures, for he was just beginning to perceive how adaptable the girl might be. And there was about her that indefinable something which, when a painter discovers it, interests him and arouses his intense artistic curiosity.

“You know,” he said musingly, “you are something more than pretty, Dulcie… I could put you in eighteenth century clothes and you’d look logical. Yes, and in seventeenth century clothes, too… I could do some amusing things with you in oriental garments… A young Herodiade … Calypso … Theodora… She was a child, too, you know. There’s a portrait with bobbed hair – a young girl by Van Dyck… You know you are quite stimulating to me, Dulcie. You excite a painter’s imagination. 100 It’s rather odd,” he added naïvely, “that I never discovered you before; and I’ve known you over two years.”

He had seated himself on the sofa while discoursing. Now he got up, touched a bell twice. The Finnish maid, Selinda, with her high cheek-bones, frosty blue eyes and colourless hair, appeared in cap and apron.

“Selinda,” he said, “take Miss Dulcie into my room. In a long, leather Turkish box on the third shelf of my clothes closet is a silk and gold costume and a lot of jade jewelry. Please put her into it.”

So Dulcie Soane went away with her cat in her arms, beside the neat and frosty-eyed Selinda; and Barres opened a portfolio of engravings, where were gathered the lovely aristocrats of Van Dyck and Rubens and Gainsborough and his contemporaries – a charmingly mixed company, separated by centuries and frontiers, yet all characterised by a common something– some inexplicable similarity which Barres recognised without defining.

“It’s rather amusing,” he murmured, “but that kid, Dulcie, seems to remind me of these people – somehow or other… One scarcely looks for qualities in the child of an Irish janitor… I wonder who her mother was…”

When he looked up again Dulcie was standing there on the thick rug. On her naked feet were jade bracelets, jade-set rings on her little toes; a cascade of jade and gold falling over her breasts to the straight, narrow breadth of peacock hue which fell to her ankles. And on her childish head, clasping the ruddy bobbed hair, glittered the jade-incrusted diadem of a fairy princess of Cathay.

The Prophet, gathered close to her breast, stared 101 back at Barres with eyes that dimmed the splendid jade about him.

“That settles it,” he said, the tint of excitement rising in his cheeks. “I have discovered a model and a wonder! And right here is where I paint my winter Academy – right here and right now!.. And I call it ‘The Prophets.’ Climb up on that model stand and squat there cross-legged, and stare at me – straight at me – the way your cat stares!.. There you are. That’s right! Don’t move. Stay put or I’ll come over and bow-string you! – you little miracle!”

“Do – you mean me?” faltered Dulcie.

“You bet, Sweetness! Do you know how beautiful you are? Well, never mind – ” He had begun already to draw with a wet brush, and now he relapsed into absorbed silence.

The Prophet watched him steadily. The studio became intensely still.

VIII
DULCIE ANSWERS

The studio door bell rang while Barres was at breakfast one morning late in June. Aristocrates leisurely answered the door, but shut it again immediately and walked out into the kitchenette without any explanation.

Selinda removed the breakfast cover and fetched the newspaper. Later, Aristocrates, having washed his master’s brushes, brought them into the studio mincingly, upon a silver service-salver.

“No letters?” inquired Barres, glancing up over the morning paper and laying aside his cigarette.

“No letters, suh. No co’espondence in any shape, fo’m or manner, suh.”

“Anybody to see me?” inquired Barres, always amused at Aristocrates’ flights of verbiage.

“Nobody, suh, excusin’ a persistless ’viduality inquihin’ fo’ you, suh.”

“What persistless individuality was that?” asked Barres.

“A ve’y or-nary human objec’, suh, pahshially afflicted with one bad eye.”

“That one-eyed man? He’s been here several times, hasn’t he? Why does he come?”

“Fo’ commercial puhposes, suh.”

“Oh, a pedlar?”

“He mentions a desiah, suh, to dispose, commercially, of vahious impo’ted materials requiahed by ahtists.”

“Didn’t you show him the sign in the hall, ‘No pedlars allowed’?”

“Yaas, suh.”

“What did he say?”

“I would not demean myse’f to repeat what this human objec’ said, suh.”

“And what did you do then?”

“Mistuh Barres, suh, I totally igno’hed that man,” replied Aristocrates languidly.

“Quite right. But you tell Soane to enforce the rule against pedlars. Every day there are two or three of them ringing at the studio, trying to sell colours, laces, or fake oriental rugs. It annoys me. Selinda can’t hear the bell and I have to leave my work and open the door. Tell that persistless one-eyed man to keep away. Tell Soane to bounce him next time he enters Dragon Court. Do you understand?”

“Yaas, suh. But Soane, suh, he’s a might friendly Irish. He’s spo’tin’ ’round Grogan’s nights, ’longa this here one-eyed ’viduality. Yaas, suh. I done seen ’em co-gatherin’ on vahious occasionalities.”

“Oho!” commented Barres. “It’s graft, is it? This one-eyed pedlar meets Soane at Grogan’s and bribes him with a few drinks to let him peddle colours in Dragon Court! That’s the Irish of it, Aristocrates. I began to suspect something like that. All right. I’ll speak to Soane myself… Leave the studio door open; it’s warm in here.”

The month of May was now turning somewhat sultry as it melted into June. Every pivot-pane in the big studio window had been swung wide open. The sun had already clothed every courtyard tree with dense and tender foliage; hyacinth and tulip were gone and Soane’s subscription geraniums blazed in their 104 place like beds of coals heaped up on the grass plot of Dragon Court.

But blue sky, sunshine of approaching summer, gentle winds and freshening rains brought only restlessness to New Yorkers that month of May.

Like the first two years of the war, the present year seemed strange, unreal; its vernal breezes brought no balm, its blue skies no content. The early summer sunlight seemed almost uncanny in a world where, beyond the sea, millions of men at arms swayed ceaselessly under sun and moon alike, interlocked in one gigantic death grip! – a horrible and blood-drenched human chain of butchery stretching half around the earth.

Into every Western human eye had come strange and subtle shadows which did not depart with moments of forgetful mirth, intervals of self-absorption, hours filled with familiar interests – the passions, hopes, perplexities of those years which were now no more.

Those years of yesterdays! A vast and depthless cleft already divided them from to-day. They seemed as remote as dusty centuries – those days of an ordered and tranquil world – those days of little obvious faiths unshattered – even those days of little wars, of petty local strifes, of an almost universal calm and peace and trust in brotherhood and in the obligations of civilisation.

Familiar yesterday had vanished, its creeds forgotten. It was already decades away, and fading like a legend in the ever-increasing glare of the red and present moment.

And the month of May seemed strange, and its soft skies and sun seemed out of place in a world full of dying – a world heavy with death – a western world aloof from the raging hell beyond the seas, yet already 105 tense under the distant threat of three continents in flames – and all aquiver before the deathly menace of that horde of blood-crazed demons still at large, still unsubdued, still ranging the ruins of the planet which they had so insanely set on fire.

Entire nations were still burning beyond the ocean; other nations had sunk into cinders. Over the Eastern seas the furnace breath began to be felt along the out-thrust coast lines of the Western World. Inland, not yet; but every seaward city became now conscious of that first faint warning wave of heat from hell. Millions of ears strained to catch the first hushed whisper of the tumult. Silent in its suspense the Great Republic listened. Only the priesthood of the deaf and wooden gods continued voluble. But Israel had already begun to lift up its million eyes; and its ancient faith began to glow again; and its trust was becoming once more a living thing – the half-forgotten trust of Israel in that half-forgotten Lord, who, in the beginning, had been their helper and their shield.

Through the open studio door came Dulcie Soane. The Prophet followed at her slender heels, gently waving an urbane tail.

After his first smiling greeting – he always rose, advanced, and took her hand with that pleasant appearance of formality so adored by femininity, youthful or mature – he resumed his seat and continued to write his letters.

These finished, he stamped them, rang for Aristocrates, picked up his palette and brushes, and pulled out the easel upon which was the canvas for the morning.

Dulcie, still in the hands of Selinda, had not yet 106 emerged. The Prophet sat upright on the carved table, motionless as a cat of ebony with green-jewelled eyes.

“Well, old sport,” said Barres, stepping across the rug to caress the cat, “you and your pretty mistress begin to look very interesting on my canvas.”

The Prophet received the blandishments with dignified gratitude. A discreet and feathery purring filled the room as Barres stroked the jet black, silky fur.

“Fine cat, you are,” commented the young man, turning as Dulcie entered.

She laid one hand on his extended arm and sprang lightly to the model stand. And the next moment she was seated – a slim, gemmed thing glimmering with imperial jade from top to toe.

Barres laid the Prophet in her arms, stepped back while Dulcie arranged the docile cat, then retreated to his canvas.

“All right, Sweetness?”

“All right,” replied the child happily. And the morning séance was on.

Barres was usually inclined to ramble along conversationally in his pleasant, detached way while at work, particularly if work went well.

“Where were we yesterday, Dulcie? Oh, yes; we were talking about the Victorian era and its art; and we decided that it was not the barren desert that the ultra-moderns would have us believe. That’s what we decided, wasn’t it?”

“You decided,” she said.

“So did you, Dulcie. It was a unanimous decision. Because we both concluded that some among the Victorians were full of that sweet, clean sanity which alone endures. You recollect how our decision started?”

“Yes. It was about my new pleasure in Tennyson, Browning, Morris, Arnold, and Swinburne.”

“Exactly. Victorian poets, if sometimes a trifle stilted and self-conscious, wrote nobly; makers of Victorian prose displayed qualities of breadth, imagination and vision and a technical cultivation unsurpassed. The musical compositions of that epoch were melodious and sometimes truly inspired; never brutal, never vulgar, never degenerate. And the Victorian sculptors and painters – at first perhaps austerely pedantic – became, as they should be, recorders of the times and customs of thought, bringing the end of the reign of a great Queen to an admirable renaissance.”

Dulcie’s grey eyes never left his. And if she did not quite understand every word, already the dawning familiarity with his vocabulary and a general comprehension of his modes of self-expansion permitted her to follow him.

“A great Queen, a great reign, a great people,” he rambled on, painting away all the while. “And if in that era architecture declined toward its lowest level of stupidity, and if taste in furniture and in the plastic, decorative, and textile arts was steadily sinking toward its lowest ebb, and if Mrs. Grundy trudged the Empire, paramount, dull and smugly ferocious, while all snobbery saluted her and the humble grovelled before her dusty brogans, yet, Dulcie, it was a great era.

“It was great because its faith had not been radically impaired; it was sane because Germany had not yet inoculated the human race with its porcine political vulgarities, its bestial degeneracy in art… And if, perhaps, the sentimental in British art and literature predominated, thank God it had not yet been tainted with the stark ugliness, the swinish nakedness, the ferocious leer of things Teutonic!”

He continued to paint in silence for a while. Presently the Prophet yawned on Dulcie’s knees, displaying a pink cavern.

“Better rest,” he said, nodding smilingly at Dulcie. She released the cat, who stretched, arched his back, yawned again gravely, and stalked away over the velvety Eastern carpet.

Dulcie got up lithely and followed him on little jade-encrusted, naked feet.

A box of bon-bons lay on the sofa; she picked up Rossetti’s poems, turned the leaves with jewel-laden fingers, while with the other hand she groped for a bon-bon, her grey eyes riveted on the pages before her.

During these intervals between poses it was the young man’s custom to make chalk sketches of the girl, recording swiftly any unstudied attitude, any unconscious phase of youthful grace that interested him.

Dulcie, in the beginning, diffidently aware of this, had now become entirely accustomed to it, and no longer felt any responsibility to remain motionless while he was busy with red chalk or charcoal.

When she had rested sufficiently, she laid aside her book, hunted up the Prophet, who lazily endured the gentle tyranny, and resumed her place on the model stand.

And so they worked away all the morning, until luncheon was served in the studio by Aristocrates; and Barres in his blouse, and Dulcie in her peacock silk, her jade, and naked feet, gravely or lightly as their moods dictated, discussed an omelette and a pot of tea or chocolate, and the ways and manners and customs of a world which Dulcie now was discovering as a brand new and most enchanting planet.

IX
HER DAY

June was ending in a very warm week. Work in the studio lagged, partly because Dulcie, preparing for graduation, could give Barres little time; partly because, during June, that young man had been away spending the week-ends with his parents and his sister at Foreland Farms, their home.

From one of these visits he returned to the city just in time to read a frantic little note from Dulcie Soane:

“Dear Mr. Barres, please, please come to my graduation. I do want somebody there who knows me. And my father is not well. Is it too much to ask of you? I hadn’t the courage to speak to you about it when you were here, but I have ventured to write because it will be so lonely for me to graduate without having anybody there I know.

“Dulcie Soane.”

It was still early in the morning; he had taken a night train to town.

So when he had been freshened by a bath and change of linen, he took his hat and went down stairs.

A heavy, pasty-visaged young woman sat at the desk in the entrance hall.

“Where is Soane?” he inquired.

“He’s sick.”

“Where is he?”

“In bed,” she replied indifferently. The woman’s manner just verged on impertinence. He hesitated, 110 then walked across to the superintendent’s apartments and entered without knocking.

Soane, in his own room, lay sleeping off the consequences of an evening at Grogan’s. One glance was sufficient for Barres, and he walked out.

On Madison Avenue he found a florist, selected a bewildering bouquet, and despatched it with a hasty note, by messenger, to Dulcie at her school. In the note he wrote:

“I shall be there. Cheer up!”

He also sent more flowers to his studio, with pencilled orders to Aristocrates.

In a toy-shop he found an appropriate decoration for the centre of the lunch table.

Later, in a jeweller’s, he discovered a plain gold locket, shaped like a heart and inset with one little diamond. A slender chain by which to suspend it was easily chosen; and an extra payment admitted him to the emergency department where he looked on while an expert engraved upon the locket: “Dulcie Soane from Garret Barres,” and the date.

After that he went into the nearest telephone booth and called up several people, inviting them to dine with him that evening.

It was nearly ten o’clock now. He took his little gift, stopped a taxi, and arrived at the big brick high-school just in time to enter with the last straggling parents and family friends.

The hall was big and austerely bare, except for the ribbons and flags and palms which decorated it. It was hot, too, though all the great blank windows had been swung open wide.

The usual exercises had already begun; there were speeches from Authority; prayers by Divinity; choral effects by graduating pulchritude.

The class, attired in white, appeared to average much older than Dulcie. He could see her now, in her reconstructed communion dress, holding the big bouquet which he had sent her, one madonna lily of which she had detached and pinned over her breast.

Her features were composed and delicately flushed; her bobbed hair was tucked up, revealing the snowy neck.

One girl after another advanced and read or spoke, performing the particular parlour trick assigned her in the customary and perfectly unremarkable manner characteristic of such affairs.

Rapturous parental demonstrations greeted each effort; piano, violin and harp filled in nobly. A slight haze of dust, incident to pedalistic applause, invaded the place; there was an odour of flowers in the heated atmosphere.

Glancing at a programme which he had found on his seat, Barres read: “Song: Dulcie Soane.”

Looking up at her where she sat on the stage, among her comrades in white, he noticed that her eyes were busy searching the audience – possibly for him, he thought, experiencing an oddly pleasant sensation at the possibility.

The time at length arrived for Dulcie to do her parlour trick; she rose and came forward, clasping the big, fragrant bouquet, prettily flushed but self-possessed. The harp began a little minor prelude – something Irish and not very modern. Then Dulcie’s pure, untrained voice stole winningly through the picked harp-strings’ hesitation:

“Heart of a colleen,
Where do you roam?
Heart of a colleen,
Far from your home?
Laden with love you stole from her breast!
Wandering dove, return to your nest!

Sodgers are sailin’
Away to the wars;
Ladies are wailin’
Their woe to the stars;
Why is the heart of you straying so soon —
Heart that was part of you, Eileen Aroon?

Lost to a sodger,
Gone is my heart!
Lost to a sodger,
Now we must part —
I and my heart – for it journeys afar
Along with the sodgers who sail to the war!

Tears that near blind me
My pride shall dry, —
Wisha! don’t mind me!
Lave a lass cry!
Only a sodger can whistle the tune
That coaxes the heart out of Eileen Aroon!”

And Dulcie’s song ended.

Almost instantly the audience had divined in the words she sang a significance which concerned them – a warning – perhaps a prophecy. The 69th Regiment of New York infantry was Irish, and nearly every seat in the hall held a relative of some young fellow serving in its ranks.

The applause was impulsive, stormy, persistent; the audience was demanding the young girl’s recall; the noise they made became overwhelming, checking the mediating music and baffling the next embarrassed graduate, scheduled to read an essay, and who stood there mute, her manuscript in her hand.

Finally the principal of the school arose, went over to Dulcie, and exchanged a few words with her. Then he came forward, hand lifted in appeal for silence.

“The music and words of the little song you have just heard,” he said, “were written, I have just learned, by the mother of the girl who sang them. They were written in Ireland a number of years ago, when Irish regiments were sent away for over-seas service. Neither words nor song have ever been published. Miss Soane found them among her mother’s effects.

“I thought the story of the little song might interest you. For, somehow, I feel – as I think you all feel – that perhaps the day may come – may be near – when the hearts of our women, too, shall be given to their soldiers – sons, brothers, fathers – who are ‘sailin’ away to the wars.’ But if that time comes – which God avert! – then I know that every man here will do his duty… And every woman… And I know that:

‘Tears that near blind you,
Your pride shall dry! – ’”

He paused a moment:

“Miss Soane has prepared no song to sing as an encore. In her behalf, and in my own, I thank you for your appreciation. Be kind enough to permit the exercises to proceed.”

And the graduating exercises continued.

Barres waited for Dulcie. She came out among the first of those departing, walking all alone in her reconstructed white dress, and carrying his bouquet. When she caught sight of him, her face became radiant and she made her way toward him through the crowd, seeking his outstretched hand with hers, clinging 114 to it in a passion of gratitude and emotion that made her voice tremulous:

“My bouquet – it is so wonderful! I love every flower in it! Thank you with all my heart. You are so kind to have come – so kind to me – so k-kind – ”

“It is I who should be grateful, Dulcie, for your charming little song,” he insisted. “It was fascinating and exquisitely done.”

“Did you really like it?” she asked shyly.

“Indeed I did! And I quite fell in love with your voice, too – with that trick you seem to possess of conveying a hint of tears through some little grace-note now and then… And there were tears hidden in the words; and in the melody, too… And to think that your mother wrote it!”

“Yes.”

After a short interval of silence he released her hand.

“I have a taxi for you,” he said gaily. “We’ll drive home in state.”

The girl flushed again with surprise and gratitude:

“Are – are you coming, too?”

“Certainly I’m going to take you home. Don’t you belong to me?” he demanded laughingly.

“Yes,” she said. But her forced little smile made the low-voiced answer almost solemn.

“Well, then!” he said cheerfully. “Come along. What’s mine I look after. We’ll have lunch together in the studio, if you are too proud to pose for a poor artist this afternoon.”

At this her sensitive face cleared and she laughed happily.

“The pride of a high-school graduate!” he commented, as he seated himself beside her in the taxicab. “Can anything equal it?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Her pride in your – friendship,” she ventured.

Which unexpected reply touched and surprised him.

“You dear child!” he said; “I’m proud of your friendship, too. Nothing ought to make a man prouder than winning a young girl’s confidence.”

“You are so kind,” she sighed, touching the blossoms in her bouquet with slender fingers that trembled a little. For she would have offered him a flower from it had she found courage; but it seemed presumptuous and she dropped her hand into her lap again.

Aristocrates opened the door for them: Selinda took her away.

Barres had ordered flowers for the table. In the middle of it a doll stood, attired in academic cap and gown, the Stars and Stripes in one hand, in the other a green flag bearing a gold harp.

When Dulcie came in she stopped short, enchanted at the sight of the decorated table. But when Aristocrates opened the kitchen door and her three cats came trotting in, she was overcome.

For each cat wore a red, white and blue cravat on which was pinned a silk shamrock; and although Strindberg immediately keeled over on the rug and madly attacked her cravat with her hind toes, the general effect remained admirable.

Aristocrates seated Dulcie. Upon her plate was the box containing chain and locket. And the girl cast a swift, inquiring glance across the centre flowers at Barres.

“Yes, it’s for you, Dulcie,” he said.

She turned quite pale at sight of the little gift. After a silence she leaned on the table with both elbows, shading her face with her hands.

He let her alone – let the first tense moment in her youthful life ebb out of it; nor noticed, apparently, the furtive and swift touch of her best handkerchief to her closed eyes.

Aristocrates brought her a little glass of frosted orange juice. After an interval, not looking at Barres, she sipped it. Then she took the locket and chain from the satin-lined box, read the inscription, closed her lids for a second’s silent ecstasy, opened them looking at him through rapturous tears, and with her eyes still fixed on him lifted the chain and fastened it around her slender neck.

The luncheon then proceeded, the Prophet gravely assisting from the vantage point of a neighbouring chair, the Houri, more emotional, promenading earnestly at the heels of Aristocrates. As for Strindberg, she possessed neither manners nor concentration, and she alternately squalled her desires for food or frisked all over the studio, attempting complicated maneuvres with every curtain-cord and tassel within reach.

Dulcie had found her voice again – a low, uncertain, tremulous little voice when she tried to thank him for the happiness he had given her – a clearer, firmer voice when he dexterously led the conversation into channels more familiar and serene.

They talked of the graduating exercises, of her part in them, of her classmates, of education in general.

She told him that since she was quite young she had learned to play the piano by remaining for an hour every day after school, and receiving instruction from a young teacher who needed a little extra pin money.

As for singing, she had had no instruction. Her voice had never been tried, never been cultivated.

“We’ll have it tried some day,” he said casually.

But Dulcie shook her head, explaining that it was an expensive process and not to be thought of.

“How did you pay for your piano lessons?” he asked.

“I paid twenty-five cents an hour. My mother left a little money for me when I was a baby. I spent it all that way.”

“Every bit of it?”

“Yes. I had $500. It lasted me seven years – from the time I was ten to now.”

“Are you seventeen? You don’t look it.”

“I know I don’t. My teachers tell me that my mind is very quick but my body is slow. It annoys me to be mistaken for a child of fifteen. And I have to dress that way, too, because my dresses still fit me and clothes are very expensive.”

“Are they?”

Dulcie became confidential and loquacious:

“Oh, very. You don’t know about girls’ clothes, I suppose. But they cost a very great deal. So I’ve had to wear out dresses I’ve had ever since I was fourteen and fifteen. And so I can’t put up my hair because it would make my dresses look ridiculous; and that renders the situation all the worse – to be obliged to go about with bobbed hair, you see? There doesn’t seem to be any way out of it,” she ended, with a despairing little laugh, “and I was seventeen last February!”