He met her at the street entrance to the Kahler Gallery, conducting her through the main exposition of canvases to a little shrine in the rear. It was truly a shrine, hung in black velvet, and with no lighting but that which fell indirectly on the vivid, vital thing just sprung into consciousness of life, like Aphrodite risen from the sea foam. But, just sprung into consciousness of life, she had been called on at once to contemplate death, eying it with a mysterious spiritual courage. The living gleam of flesh, the marble of the throne, and the skull's charnel ugliness stood out against a blue-green atmosphere, like that of some other plane.
Junia was startled, not by the power and beauty of this apparition, but by something else.
"You've—you've changed her," she said, with awed breathlessness, after gazing for three or four minutes in silence.
"You mean the model?"
She nodded a "Yes," without taking her eyes from the extraordinary vision.
"You've seen her?" he asked, in mild surprise.
"Just once."
"The figure is exact," he explained, "but I did have to make changes in the features. It wouldn't have done, otherwise."
"No, of course not."
More minutes passed in silent contemplation, when she said: