"This is a man's work," said Esther, studying his drawing. "No woman would ever have done it. I don't like it. I prefer her as she is and as I made her."
Wharton himself seemed to be not perfectly satisfied with his own success, for he made no answer to Esther's criticism, and after one glance at his sketch, relapsed into moody silence. Perhaps he felt that what he had drawn was not a St. Cecilia at all, and still less a Catherine Brooke. He had narrowed the face, deepened its lines, made the eyes much stronger and darker, and added at least ten years to Catherine's age, in order to give an expression of passion subsided and heaven attained.
"You have reached Nirvana," said Esther to Catherine, still studying the sketch.
"What is Nirvana?" asked Catherine.
"Ask Mr. Wharton. He has put you there."
"Nirvana is what I mean by Paradise," replied Wharton slowly. "It is eternal life, which, my poet says, consists in seeing God."
"I would not like to look like that," said Catherine in an awe-struck tone. "Do you think this picture will ever be like me?"
"The gods forbid!" said the painter uneasily.
Catherine, who could not take her eyes from this revelation of the possible mysteries in her own existence, mysteries which for the first time seemed to have come so near as to over-shadow her face, now suddenly turned to Wharton and said with irresistible simplicity:
"Mr. Wharton, will you let me have it? I have no money. Will you give it to me?"