This reassured her.
“It is too kind of you,” said she. “I had forgotten that. So send it to him.”
“Certainly. But help me to make it then as good as I can.”
“Tell me how?” she asked, feeling inexplicably uneasy.
“Why, laugh,” he said. “That is how I see you. You laugh so seldom, and you might laugh so often. Why don’t you laugh oftener?”
Then an impulse of simple honesty came to her.
“Because I am usually bored,” she said.
“Ah, you really mustn’t be bored while I am painting you,” he said. “I could do nothing with it if you were bored. Besides, it would be so uncharacteristic.”
“How is that, when I am bored so often?” she asked.
“Oh, it isn’t the things we do often that are characteristic of us,” said he. “It is the things we do eagerly, with intention.”