He said very earnestly: "Sir John Lubbock sat up day and night, never taking his eyes off the little colony of ants which he had under observation in a glass box!"
"Do you propose to sit up day and night to keep me under observation?" she asked, flushed and astounded.
"Not at first. But as my studies advance, and you become accustomed to the perfectly respectful but coldly impersonal nature of my observations, your mind, I trust, will become so broadened that you will find nothing objectionable in what at first might scare you. An artist's model, for example——"[132]
"But I am not an artist's model!" she exclaimed, with a slight shiver.
"To be a proper model at all," he said, "you must concede all for art, and remain sublimely unconscious of self. You do not matter. I do not matter. Only my work counts. And that must be honest, truthful, accurate, minute, exact—a perfect record of a woman's mind and personality."
For a few moments they both remained silent. And after a little the starlight began to play tricks with her eyes again, so that they seemed sparkling with hidden laughter. But her face was grave.
She said: "I really do need the money. I will do what I can.... And if in spite of my courage I ever shrink—our contract shall terminate at once."
"And what shall I do then?" inquired Brown.
The starlight glimmered in her eyes. She said very gravely:
"In case the demands of your realism and your art are too much for my courage, Mr. Brown—you will have to find another model to study."