Boris's face was the devotee's at mention of the god. The worldliness,
the aggressive animality vanished. "Leonardo alone among painters," said
he. "And he reached the pinnacle in one picture only--the picture of
the woman he loved yet judged."
Her own expression had changed. The least observant would have seen
just then why Boris, connoisseur, had paused before her. She had
dropped her mask, had come forth as the shy beauties of the field lift
their heads above the snow in response to the sun of early spring. For
the first time in her life she had met a human being to whom life meant
precisely what it had meant to her. His own expression of exaltation
passed with the impulse that had given it birth; but she did not see.
He was for her Boris Raphael, artist through and through. Instead of
suspicion and shrinking, her long narrow eyes, luminous, mysterious, now
expressed confidence; she would never again be afraid of one who had in
him what this man had revealed to her. She had always seen it in his
work; she greeted it in the man himself as one greets an old, a stanch
friend, tested in moods and times of sorrow and trial.
He glanced at her, glanced hastily away lest she should realize how
close he had thus quickly got to her soul, shy and graceful and
resplendent as a flamingo. "You will let me teach you?" said he.
"I don't understand your asking."
"Nor do I," replied he. "All I know is, I felt I must come and offer my
services. It only remains for you to obey your impulse to accept."
Without further hesitation she accepted; and there was firmly
established the intimate relations of master workman and apprentice,
with painting, and through painting the whole of life, as the trade, to
be learned. For, the arts are a group of sister peaks commanding the
entire panorama of truth and beauty, of action and repose; and to learn
of a master at any one of them is to be pupil to all wisdom.
Boris arranged with her to come three mornings a week to the atelier,
raftered and galleried, which he had made of the top stories of two
quaint old houses in Chelsea's one remaining green square. Soon he was
seeing her several afternoons also, at her apartment; and they were
lunching and dining together, both alone and in the company of artists
and the sort of fashionable serious-idle people who seek the society of
artists. The part of her shyness that was merely strangeness did not
long withstand his easy, sympathetic manner, his simplicity, his
adroitness at drawing out the best in any person with whom he took pains
to exert himself. It required much clever maneuvering before he got her
rid of the shyness that came from lack of belief in her power to
interest others. The people out West, inexpert in the social art,
awkward and shy with each other, often in intimate family life even, had
without in the least intending it, encouraged her and confirmed her in
this depressing disbelief. In all her life she had never been so well
acquainted with anyone as with Boris after a week of the lessons; and
with him, even after two months of friendship, she would suddenly and
unaccountably close up like a sensitive plant, be embarrassed and
constrained, feel and act as if he were a stranger. Self-confidence
finally came through others, not at all through him. Her new
acquaintances, observant, sympathetic, quickly saw what Boris pointed
out to them; and by their manner, by their many and urgent invitations
and similar delicate indirect compliments, they made her feel without
realizing it that she was not merely tolerated for his sake, but was
sought on her own account.
We hear much of the effect of things internal, little of the far more
potent effect of externals. Boris, frankly materialistic, was all for
externals. For him the external was not only the sign of what was
within, but also was actually its creator. He believed that character
was more accurately revealed in dress than in conversation, in manners
than in professions. "Show me through a woman's living place," he often
said, "and I will tell you more about her soul than she could tell her
confessor." His one interest in Neva was her physical beauty; his one
object, to develop it to the utmost of the possibilities he alone saw.
But he was in no hurry. He had the assiduous patience of genius that
works steadily and puts deliberate thought into every stroke. He would
not spoil his creation by haste; he would not rob himself of a single
one of the joys of anticipation. And his pleasure was enhanced by the
knowledge that if she so much as suspected his real design, or any
design at all, she would shut herself away beyond his reach.
"I want you as a model," said he one day, in the offhand manner he used
with her to conceal direct personal purpose. "But you've got to make
changes in your appearance--dress--way of wearing the hair--all that."
She alarmed him by coloring vividly; he had no suspicion that it was
because she had been secretly using him as a model for several months.
"I've hurt your vanity?" said he. "Well, I never before knew you had
that sort of vanity. I fancied you gave the least possible attention to
your outside."
"I'll be glad to help you in any way," she hastened to assure him.
"You're quite wrong about my reason for not accepting at once. It
wasn't wounded vanity.... I don't know whether I have much vanity or
not. I've never thought about it."
He laughed. "Well, you will have, when you've seen the picture I'll
make. What a queer, puritanic lot you Westerners are!" He seated
himself at ease astride a chair, and gazed at her impersonally, as
artist at model in whom interest is severely professional. "I suppose
you don't know you are a very beautiful woman--or could be if you half
tried."
"No, I don't," replied she indifferently. "What do you wish me to do?"
"To become beautiful."
"Don't tease me," said she curtly. "I hate my looks. I never see
myself if I can help it."
He took the master's tone with her. "You will kindly keep this away
from the personal," reprimanded he. "I am discussing you as a model.
I've no interest in your vanity or lack of it."