The Common Law | Page 7

yet too recent.
"At first," she said, "I was afraid I wouldn't do for a model--not exactly afraid of my--my appearance, but because I was a novice; and I imagined that one had to know exactly how to pose--"
"I think," he interrupted smilingly, "that you might take the pose again if you are rested. Go on talking; I don't mind it."
She sat erect, loosened the white wool robe and dropped it from her with less consciousness and effort than before. Very carefully she set her feet on the blocks, fitting the shapely heels to the chalked outlines; found the mark for her elbow, adjusted her slim, smooth body and looked at him, flushing.
"All right," he said briefly; "go ahead and talk to me."
"Do you wish me to?"
"Yes; I'd rather."
"I don't know exactly what to say."
"Say anything," he returned absently, selecting a flat brush with a very long handle.
She thought a moment, then, lifting her eyes:
"I might ask you your name."
"What? Don't you know it? Oh, Lord! Oh, Vanity! I thought you'd heard of me."
She blushed, confused by her ignorance and what she feared was annoyance on his part; then perceived that he was merely amused; and her face cleared.
"We folk who create concrete amusement for the public always imagine ourselves much better known to that public than we are, Miss West. It's our little vanity--rather harmless after all. We're a pretty decent lot, sometimes absurd, especially in our tragic moments; sometimes emotional, usually illogical, often impulsive, frequently tender-hearted as well as supersensitive.
"Now it was a pleasant little vanity for me to take it for granted that somehow you had heard of me and had climbed twelve flights of stairs for the privilege of sitting for me."
He laughed so frankly that the shy, responsive smile made her face enchanting; and he coolly took advantage of it, and while exciting and stimulating it, affixed it immortally on the exquisite creature he was painting.
"So you didn't climb those twelve flights solely for the privilege of having me paint you?"
"No," she admitted, laughingly, "I was merely going to begin at the top and apply for work all the way down until somebody took me--or nobody took me."
"But why begin at the top?"
"It is easier to bear disappointment going down," she said, seriously; "if two or three artists had refused me on the first and second floors, my legs would not have carried me up very far."
"Bad logic," he commented. "We mount by experience, using our wrecked hopes as footholds."
"You don't know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after years of steady descent--when misfortune and disappointment become endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward better things that disappointments hurt most cruelly."
He turned his head in surprise; then went on painting:
"Your philosophy is the philosophy of submission."
"Do you call a struggle of years, submission?"
"But it was giving up after all--acquiescence, despondency, a laissez faire policy."
"One may tire of fighting."
"One may. Another may not."
"I think you have never had to fight very hard."
He turned his head abruptly; after a moment's silent survey of her, he resumed his painting with a sharp, impersonal glance before every swift and decisive brush stroke:
"No; I have never had to fight, Miss West.... It was keen of you to recognise it. I have never had to fight at all. Things come easily to me--things have a habit of coming my way.... I suppose I'm not exactly the man to lecture anybody on the art of fighting fortune. She's always been decent to me.... Sometimes I'm afraid--I have an instinct that she's too friendly.... And it troubles me. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yes."
He looked up at her: "Are you sure?"
"I think so. I have been watching you painting. I never imagined anybody could draw so swiftly, so easily--paint so surely, so accurately--that every brush stroke could be so--so significant, so decisive.... Is it not unusual? And is not that what is called facility?"
"Lord in Heaven!" he said; "what kind of a girl am I dealing with?--or what kind of a girl is dealing so unmercifully with me?"
"I--I didn't mean--"
"Yes, you did. Those very lovely and wonderfully shaped eyes of yours are not entirely for ornament. Inside that pretty head there's an apparatus designed for thinking; and it isn't idle."
He laughed gaily, a trifle defiantly:
"You've said it. You've found the fly in the amber. I'm cursed with facility. Worse still it gives me keenest pleasure to employ it. It does scare me occasionally--has for years--makes me miserable at intervals--fills me full of all kinds of fears and doubts."
He turned toward her, standing on his ladder, the big palette curving up over his left shoulder, a wet brush extended in his right hand:
"What shall I do!" he exclaimed so earnestly that she sat up straight, startled, forgetting