But beneath the purple chlamys poor little Olive still trembled and grieved. Not until her hope was thus crushed, did she know how near her heart it had been. She thought of Michael Vanbrugh's scornful rebuke, and bitter shame possessed her. She stood—patient model!—her fingers stiffening over the rich drapery, her eyes weariedly fixed on the one corner of the room, in the direction of which she was obliged to turn her head. The monotonous attitude contributed to plunge her mind into that dull despair which produces immobility—Michael Vanbrugh had never had so steady a model.
As Olive was placed, he could not see her face unless he moved. When he did so, he quite startled her out of a reverie by exclaiming—
“Exquisite! Stay just as you are. Don't change your expression. That's the very face I want for the Mother of Alcestis. A little older I must make it—but the look of passive misery, the depressed eyelids and mouth. Ah, beautiful—beautiful! Do, pray, let me have that expression again, just for three minutes!” cried the eager painter.
He accomplished his end; for Olive's features, from long habit, had had good practice in that line;—and she would willingly have fixed them into all Le Bran's Passions, if necessary for artistic purposes. Delighted at his success, Mr. Vanbrugh suddenly thought of his model, not as a model, but as a human being. He wondered what had produced the look which, now faithfully transferred to the canvas, completed “a bit” that had troubled him for weeks. He then thought of the drawings, and of his roughness concerning them. Usually he hated amateurs and their productions, but perhaps these might not be so bad. He would not condescend to lift them, but fidgeting with his mahl-stick, he stirred them about once or twice—accidentally as it seemed—until he had a very good notion of what they were. Then, after half-an-hour's silent painting, he thus addressed Olive.
“Miss Rothesay, what put it into your head that you wanted to be an artist?”
Olive answered nothing. She was ashamed to speak of her girlish aspirations, such as they had been; and she could not tell the other motive—the secret about Mr. Gwynne. Besides, Vanbrugh would have scorned the bare idea of her entering on the great career of Art for money! So she was silent.
He did not seem to mind it at all, but went on talking, as he sometimes did, in a sort of declamatory monologue.
“I am not such a fool as to say that genius is of either sex; but it is an acknowledged fact that no woman ever was a great painter, poet, or musician. Genius, the mighty one, scorns to exist in weak female nature; and even if it did, custom and education would certainly stunt its growth. Look here, child,”—and, to Olive's astonishment, he snatched up one of her drawings, and began lecturing thereupon—“here you have made a design of some originality. I hate your young lady copyists of landscapes and flowers, and Jullien's paltry heads. Come, let us see this epigraph, 'Laon's Vision of Cythna,'
Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood.
Good! Bold enough, too!”