"You'll have the 'clay' hereafter," he said.
XXI
At the outset she was rather skeptical of his faith in her. Had not Atwood said that MacGregor saw genius in all his friends? But the younger man now hailed him a most discerning judge.
"It's the something I divined," he declared jubilantly, "the gold-bearing vein I believed in, but hadn't the luck to unearth. Now to develop it! What does Mac advise?"
"One of the art schools," said Jean. "I can go evenings, it seems."
"And work days! It's a stiff programme you plan."
"But the school won't mean work," she declared. "Then, too, the posing comes far easier than it did. Mr. MacGregor says my muscles are almost as steady as a professional's."
"So he tells me. I'm going to insist on sharing your time. He has monopolized you long enough."
MacGregor's monopoly did not cease at once, however. His first step on discovering Jean's talent was to enlist Richter's expert criticism and counsel with the practical outcome that the sculptor's door swung open to her in the daylight hours when MacGregor worked with male models. The clay-modeling-room at the art school was a wonderful place. Its casts, its tools, its methods, were a revelation after the crude shifts with which her father had had to content himself; but Richter's studio transcended it as a university transcends a kindergarten. Here were conceived ideas which found perpetuity in bronze!