But the pitfalls of the accidental had no allurements for him. She rested, changed position, stretched her limbs, took a long circle or two, skimming the hillside when she needed the reaction. But always she came swinging back again to stand and watch her lover with a half-smiling, half-tender gaze that tried his sangfroid terribly when he strove to catch it and record it in the calm and scientific technique which might excite anybody except the workman.
"Am I pretty, Duane?"
"Annoyingly divine. I'm trying not to think of it, dear, until my hand and heart may wobble with impunity. Are you cold?"
"No.... Do you think you'll make a full-fledged picture from this motive?"
"How did you guess?"
"I don't know. I've a premonition that your reputation is going to soar up like a blazing star from this waste of snow around us.... I wish—I wish that it might be from me, through me—my humble aid—that your glory breaks out——"
"If it ever does, it will do it through you. I told you that long ago."
"Yes."
"I've known it a long, long time, Geraldine. Without you there's nothing to me except surface. You are the depths of me."
"And you of me, Duane." Sweet eyes remote, she stood looking into space; at peace with her soul, dreaming, content. And it was then that he caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on the ruddy hearthstone of the gods.