Gregory spoke at last. The artist drew a long breath and turned away, satisfied. They both found chairs then, and settled down for an hour of talk.
“Where could you find a model for such a conception? It would be most difficult, I should think, in our self-conscious, sophisticated, modern life.”
“It was my model who created my picture,” replied Everett. “Mrs. Keith Burgess is the lady’s name. Seeing her at church, when she came here a bride, gave me my first thought of the thing.”
Gregory looked at him meditatively.
“It is most remarkable that a woman who was married could have suggested your little Mary there, with that child’s unconsciousness in her eyes, that obviously virginal soul. When a woman has loved a man, she has another look.”
Everett was surprised at this comment from Gregory, who had never married, and who was peculiarly silent and indifferent commonly when the subject of love or marriage was touched in conversation. He answered presently:
“When Mrs. Burgess was married and came here, she was in a sense a child. She was thoughtful and serious beyond her years in religious concerns, but quite undeveloped on all other lines, and as inexperienced in the motives and energies of the modern world as a child—I think one might have described her then as a very religious child.”
“Has she changed greatly?”
“Not so much, and yet somewhat. She has begun to read, you see, which she never had done except on certain scholastic and religious lines; she has begun to think for herself somewhat, and in a sense, one could say, she has begun to live.”
John Gregory did not reply, but he said to himself that if she had begun to love she could not have furnished his friend with the inspiration and the model for just that picture.