LITMIR.BIZ

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much rather you didn’t. You might get the wrong impression. I haven’t really got a criminal mind, honestly.”

      “I never thought for a moment that you had,” he said, looking at her in some wonder.

      “I know, but after reading my work you might think otherwise. And I wouldn’t like that—not now we’ve become friends.”

      Clive smiled and almost unconsciously patted her hand as it lay on the table.

      “All right, it’s a promise. I won’t look at your stuff. Not that I want to. I’d much sooner preserve the memory of the charm­ing girl you are.... Tell me, whereabouts in Surrey do you live? You said Midhampton, didn’t you?”

      “Yes, but Midhampton’s only a village, too small for mention on any map. I live in a small detached house called Tudor Cottage about a mile away from the village itself. I was born there, raised there, and when my parents died recently, within two months of each other, the place automatically became mine.” Elsa mused for a moment or two and then added slowly. “They didn’t leave me any money. What I have I’ve earned from my writing. But they did leave me something much more valuable than cash—freedom, and the opportunity to be somebody.”

      “You mean they tried to prevent that when they were alive?” Clive asked interestedly.

      Elsa nodded but she did not elaborate on the subject.

      “The people in Midhampton have got to thinking of me as a kind of recluse—chiefly because I stay at home such a lot to do my writing and don’t mix in the affairs of the village. Only on rare occasions do I visit London on business. And this time it seems to have developed into something more than just business, doesn’t it? I’ve been given a chance to become famous through having my portrait in the Academy.”

      “Well, there is that possibility,” Clive admitted, “but don’t put too much store on it. Critics are tough to please, sometimes. If my picture doesn’t rate as high as it should, nobody will care tuppence who the subject is.... All in the luck of the game.”

      “You must make it a masterpiece!” Elsa insisted, with an unusual earnestness. “Promise me that you will? I so want to be known and talked about— And yet I also want to stay in the back­ground and listen to the comments flying back and forth. I—I get a sort of sense of omnipotence that way.”

      “Which is pretty much what you said yesterday, and I still don’t get the angle.” Clive gave a shrug. “However, I’ll put my best into the job; be sure of that. But promise me that you’ll give me time to do the thing properly. One can hardly rush a masterpiece,” he added dryly.

      Nor did he. In three more days, during which Elsa sat for him on three mornings and had three lunches, he still only had the rudiments of the painting in being. But the fact did not seem to worry him. To even be with her seemed to satisfy him—and though she would not admit it she found herself, when away from him, thinking almost constantly of his dark hair, amused blue eyes, and the clean-cut line of his jaw.

      On the fourth morning Barbara Vane had a few comments to make, and she made them in the forthright fashion that Elsa had come to know was characteristic of her.

      “I begin to think that I’ve stopped around here long enough!” she declared.

      The remark, coming into the midst of silence whilst Clive was painting, made him cease work and gaze at her in astonishment. Elsa too turned her head and noticed that Barbara was in her hat and coat instead of her normal smock.

      “Since when did you become a stooge?” Clive asked, trying to and sound patient.

      “Apparently since Miss Farraday came! If you think I enjoy playing around here as a sort of chaperone—a job one usually associates with a middle-aged dowager—you’re vastly mistaken! I’m sick of it, Clive! If you’re so keen on ethics you’d better find a new way to make them operate. I’ve had enough.”

      “But, Babs, this is absurd!” Clive protested. “You’ve always hung around here when it’s been necessary for me to have a girl as a model—”

      “And I’ve always disliked it!” Barbara snapped. “Hang it all, the position’s ridiculous! Isn’t it unethical enough that I’m here alone for days on end, acting as your model—”

      “Of course it isn’t! You’re a professional model. That’s no more unethical than a doctor and his patient— And all that apart, we’re good friends who understand each other. I just can’t think why you want to let me down.”

      Barbara moved forward a little, a gleam in her blue eyes.

      “How can you be so intolerably stupid, Clive?” she demanded. “Do you think I like seeing you taken away from me?”

      Clive put down his brush and gave Elsa a glance as she rose from her chair. Barbara looked from one to the other of them.

      “It sounds to me,” Clive told her curtly, “as though you’re deliberately trying to create trouble, Babs. What about Terry Draycott? He’s the one you’ve really fallen for, and you know it.”

      “Him!” The girl threw up her hands. “Good heavens, is that what you think? Because he pays me a great deal of attention and takes me out sometimes? I never even give him a second thought when he isn’t present. It’s you, Clive, and always has been.... Oh, I know it isn’t customary to bare one’s emotions in this fashion,” she went on petulantly, “but I’m the type who speaks her mind. The thing that I’ve seen growing before my eyes these last few days has finally got too much for me. I can’t stand any more of it.”

      “What thing?” Clive asked ominously.

      “Don’t act the innocent! You know perfectly well you’re in love with Miss Farraday—even if you do still call her by her surname! And she with you, or I don’t know my own sex.”

      There was silence for a moment, Elsa gently biting at her lower lip and looking at the angry girl pensively; then suddenly Clive banged his fist on the bench.

      “All right I am in love with Elsa!” he declared loudly. “And I’ll go on being so, whether you like it or not! I still don’t believe you ever had the slightest regard for me, beyond ordinary friendship, that is. I know I haven’t for you.”

      Barbara took a deep breath. “But for this—this woman, how much I might have done,” she whispered. “I could have made you see that we are indispensable to one another. As it is it’s ruined—for good. I’m clearing out, Clive,” she finished curtly. “And I’m never coming back.”

      “But, Babs, you can’t! You’ve an unfinished contract and there are some pictures which—”

      The door slammed behind the girl and there was the sound of her footfalls receding down the stairs. Clive rubbed his chin slowly and then turned as he realized Elsa was beside him.

      “Let her go,” she said quietly. “If she has a nature as jealous as that you’re well rid of her, don’t you think?”

      “Well, I suppose so, but it’s a bit of a shock. I’ve known her for such a long time, and she’s right about being indispensable, you know—”

      “Nobody is indispensable, Clive. If it’s a model you’re after, then what about me?”

      Elsa turned gently on her heel and, delectable though her youth­ful figure was, Clive hardly seemed to notice it. He frowned hard to himself.

      “Funny thing,” he mused. “I never even guessed that she felt that way about me.”

      “I did,” Elsa said, coming to a halt in her gyrations. “I saw it in her eyes: that was why I asked you about her. It just so happens that we are a better match, that’s all. Can’t alter Nature, can you?”

      Clive looked at her steadily. “A moment or two ago, when Babs was here, I referred to you as Elsa—and I’m going to go on doing it. Just the same as you’ve taken to calling me Clive. The form­alities

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