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“Oh, so much has happened to you. And nothing has ever happened to me—nothing but this,” she sighed.

“But this!” laughed he. “Don’t you call it something—to be clandestinely an artist’s model? Think how horrified your prim, proper, pious people would be if they knew!”

“What kind of people do you think I come from?” she inquired, gazing at him quizzically.

“That’s tabooed,” he answered. “I’ve never speculated about it. When your canoe rounds that bend yonder I never follow. You begin and end at the bend.”

“I don’t see how you can help wondering,” mused she. “I wonder a great deal about you. Not that I want to know. I’d rather wonder—fancy it as I please—differently every day. You see, I haven’t much to think about—much that’s interesting. Honestly, don’t you wonder—at all—about me?”

“I’ve always been that way about my friends,” replied he, and went on to explain sincerely: “They interest me only as they appear to me. Why should I bother about what they are to other people—people I don’t know and don’t care to know?”