Wray continued to keep the sketch before Jennie, hanging over her shoulder. He was so close that she felt his breath on her neck. He could easily have pressed his lips against her amber-colored hair, and Jennie wished he would. But having long ago made up his mind that she could best be won by a system of starving out, he refrained from doing it. As, however, she persisted in brushing the sketch aside, he straightened himself up.
"Then, Jennie, I'm afraid I can't use you any more—that is, for the present. Since you won't do it, I must get some one who will."
"You could paint another kind of picture," she argued indignantly, "with me with clothes on."
"You don't understand. I'm an artist. An artist doesn't paint the picture he chooses, but the one that's given him to paint."
"No one gave you this to paint. It isn't a commission. It's just your own bad mind."
"I'm not ready to explain what it is. You wouldn't understand. Something comes to you. You've got to obey it. This is the picture I've seen and which I'm obliged to do next. And, besides, it isn't a bad mind, Jennie. The human form is the most—"
"Oh, you don't have to hand me out any hokum about the human form. It's all very well in its place. But you fellows are crazy—the way you stick it up where it doesn't belong. Look at that picture of Sims's you were all so wild about—three women walking in a field, and not a stitch between them. Who'd go out like that? There's no sense in it—"
"It isn't a question of sense, Jennie; it's one of business. If you want to be a model, you must be a model and meet the demands of the market."
She wore the cheap linen suit that had been her best last summer, and the corresponding hat; but her beauty being of the type which subordinates externals to itself, she was more than adorable; she was elegant. With tears still rolling down her cheeks, she pointed at the sketch Wray held in his hand as he stood before her at a distance.
"Do you know what my father would do if he thought I was going to be painted like that? He'd turn me out of doors."