Neva colored with embarrassment, remembered she was but a model, braced herself resolutely.
"For my purposes— Just stand before that mirror there." He indicated the great mirror which gave him double the width of the atelier as perspective for his work. "Now, you'll observe that by braiding your hair and putting it on top of your head, you ruin the lines I wish to bring out. The beautiful and the grotesque are very close to each other. Your face and figure ought to be notable as an exhibit of beautiful lengths. But when you put your hair on top of your head, you extend the long lines of neck and face too far—at least, for my purposes."
"I see," said she, herself quite forgotten; for, his impersonal manner was completely convincing, and his exposition of the principles of art was as important as novel and interesting.
"Do your hair well down toward the nape of the neck—and loosely. Somewhat as it was that night at the Morrises, only—more so."
"I'll try it," she said with what sounded hopefully like the beginnings of acquiescence.
"That's better!" exclaimed he, in approval of her docile tone. "And keep on trying till you get it right. You'll know. You've got good taste. If you hadn't, it'd be useless to talk these things to you. The thing is to bring out your natural good taste—to encourage, to educate, instead of repressing it.... No, don't turn away, yet. I want you to notice some color effects. That dress you have on— You always wear clothes that are severely somber, almost funereal—quite funereal. One would think, to look at your garb, that there was no laughter anywhere in you—no possibilities of laughter."
Neva's laughing face, looking at him by way of the mirror, showed that she was now in just the mood he wished. "I want to make a very human picture," he went on. "And, while the dominant note of the human aspect in repose is serious—pensive to tragic—it is relieved by suggestions of laughter. Your dress makes your sadness look depressed, resigned, chronic. Yet you yourself are strong and cheerful and brave. You do not whimper. Why look as if you did, and by infection depress others? Don't you think we owe it to a sad world to contribute whatever of lightness we can?"
She nodded. "I hadn't thought of that," said she.
"Well, don't you think it's about time you did? ... Now, please observe that you wear clothes with too many short lines in their making—lines that contradict the long lines of your head and body."
She whirled away from the mirror, hung her head, with color high and hands nervous. "Don't, please," she said. "You are making me miserably self-conscious."