"Model," said Vi, coolly. "He's been doing me."
"Doing _you_!" said Leighton, looking at her curiously.
"There, there," said Vi, "don't let your imagination run away with you. Not in the nude. By the way, can you let me have the key? I left something in the studio, and I didn't like to go to Nelton."
"Certainly," said Leighton. "I'll walk by there with you."
Vi gave a shrug of protest, but Leighton's back was already turned. He fetched the key, and together they walked over to Lewis's atelier. When they had climbed the stairs and were at the door, Vi said a little breathlessly and without a drawl:
"Do you mind very much not coming in? I won't be but a minute."
Leighton glanced at her, surprised. "Not at all," he said, and handed her the key. He took out a cigarette and lit it as she opened the door and closed it behind her. He started pacing up and down the bare hall. Presently he grew impatient, and glanced at his watch; then he stopped short in his tracks. From behind the closed door came unmistakably the sound of a woman sobbing.
Leighton did not hesitate. He threw open the door and walked in. Except for Vi, curled up in a little heap on the couch, the atelier was very still, vast, somber. In its center shone a patch of light. In the patch of light, on a low working pedestal, stood a statue. On the floor were a tumbled cloth and a fallen screen. Leighton stood stock-still and stared.
The sculptured figure was that of a woman veiled in draperies that were merely suggested. Her face, from where Leighton stood, was turned away. Her right arm was half outstretched, her left hung at her side, but it was peculiarly turned, as though to draw the watcher on. Then there was the left thigh. Once the eye fell on that, all else was forgotten. Into this sinking sweep had gone all the artist's terrific force of expression and suggestion. No live man would have thought of the figure as "Woman Leading the Way," once his eyes had fallen on that thigh. To such a one the statue named itself with a single flash to the brain, and the name it spoke was "Invitation."
Leighton's first impulse was one of unbounded admiration--the admiration we give to unbounded power. Then realization and a frown began to come slowly to his face. Vi, crumpled up on the couch, and sobbing hard, dry sobs,--the sobs that bring age,---helped him to realization. Lewis, his boy, had done a base thing.