Mary was bubbling with laughter.
“Constance, you human dynamo, we'll go in by all means, and hold our breaths listening to your 'resting'!”
“Don't sass your elders, naughty girl. Oh, my heavens, I've been five months in New England, and have behaved like a perfect gentlewoman all the time! Now I'm due for an attack of New Yorkitis!” Constance rushed into the sitting room, pulled off her hat and patted her hair into shape, ran to the kitchen door to say hello to Lily, and was back in her chair by the time the others had found theirs. Her quick glance traveled from one to the other.
“Now I shall listen,” she said. “Mary, tell your news. Mr. Gunther, explain your ideas.”
Mary laughed again. “Visitors first,” she nodded to the Norwegian who, as always, was staring at her with a perfectly civil fixity.
He placed a great hand on either knee and prepared to state his case. With his red-gold beard and piercing eyes, he was, Mary thought, quite the handsomest, and, after Stefan, the most attractive man she had ever seen.
“Mrs. Byrd,” he began, “I am doing, among other things, a large group called 'Pioneers' for the Frisco exhibition. It is finished in the clay—as Mrs. Elliot said—all but two heads, and is already roughly blocked in marble. I want your head, with your son's—I must have them. Six sittings will be enough. If you cannot, as I imagine, come to the city, I will bring my clay here, and we will work in your husband's studio. These figures, of whom the man is modeled from myself, do not represent pioneers in the ordinary sense. They embody my idea of those who will lead the race to future greatness. That is why I feel it essential to have you as a model.”
He spoke quite simply, without a trace of flattery, as if he were merely putting into words a self-evident truth. A compliment of such staggering dimensions, however, left Mary abashed.
“You may wonder,” he went on, seeing her silent, “why I so regard you. It is not merely your beauty, Mrs. Byrd, of which as an artist I can speak without offense, it is because to my mind you combine strong mentality and morale with simplicity of temperament. You are an Apollonian, rather than a Dionysian. Of such, in my judgment, will the super-race be made.” Gunther folded his arms and leaned back.
He was sufficiently distinguished to be able to carry off a pronouncement which in a lesser man would have been an impertinence, and he knew it.