Burleson, earnest and most worthy, engaged Querida's attention for a while; but that intellectually lithe young man evaded the ponderously impending dispute with suave skill, and his gentle smile lingered longer on Valerie than on anybody else.

Several times, with an adroit carelessness that seemed to be purposeless, he contrived to draw Valerie out of the general level of conversation by merely lowering his voice; but she seemed to understand the invitation; and, answering him as carelessly as he spoke, keyed her replies in harmony with the chatter going on around them.
He drank his tea smilingly; listened to the others; bore his part modestly; and at intervals his handsome eyes wandered about the studio, reverting frequently to the great canvas overhead.
"You know," he said to Neville, showing the eternal edge of teeth under his crisp black beard--"that composition of yours is simply superb.

I am all for it, Neville." "I'm glad you are," nodded Neville, pleasantly, "but it hasn't yet developed into what I hoped it might." His eyes swerved toward Valerie; their glances encountered casually and passed on.

Only Rita saw the girl's breath quicken for an instant--saw the scarcely perceptible quiver of Neville's mouth where the smile twitched at his lip for its liberty to tell the whole world that he was in love.

But their faces were placid, their expressions well schooled; Querida's half-veiled eyes appeared to notice nothing and for a while he remained smilingly silent.
Later, by accident, he caught sight of Valerie's portrait; he turned sharply in his chair and looked full at the canvas.
Nobody spoke for a moment; Neville, who was passing Valerie, felt the slightest contact as the velvet of her fingers brushed across his.
Then Querida rose and walked over to the portrait and stood before it in silence, biting at his vivid under lip and at the crisp hairs of his beard that framed it.
Without knowing why, Neville began to feel that Querida was finding in that half-finished work something that disturbed him; and that he was not going to acknowledge what it was that he saw there, whether of good or of the contrary.
Nobody spoke and Querida said nothing.
A mild hope entered Neville's mind that the _something_, which had never been in any work of his, might perhaps lie latent in that canvas--that Querida was discovering it--without a pleasure--but with a sensitive clairvoyance which was already warning him of a new banner in the distance, a new trumpet-call from the barriers, another lance in the lists where he, Querida, had ridden so long unchallenged and supreme.
Within him he felt a sudden and secret excitement that he never before had known--a conviction that the unexpressed hostility of Querida's silence was the truest tribute ever paid him--the tribute that at last was arousing hope from its apathy, and setting spurs to his courage.
Rita, watching Querida, yawned and concealed the indiscretion with her hand and a taunting word directed at Ogilvy, who retorted in kind.