"Well for a neatly turned compliment—"
"I mean it seems so queer you should really amount to anything."
"Now before you overwhelm me with further adulation, what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your being an artist. I can't get used to your being anything but Ernestine! That day last spring when we went to see your Salon picture, and when those chaps were talking to you, and I realised that they just simply accepted you as one of them—that you belonged, and that that was all there was about it—I, oh I had such a funny feeling that day. And now, a minute ago, when I saw that look, I had it again."
"Why, Karl, you don't mind, do you?"
"No, it's just that it seems queer. You see you're such a wonderful sweetheart, it's hard to think of you as anything else. I'll never forget that day over there. Something just seemed to leap up within you. I—well I think I was a little scared—or was I awed? Something that was shining from your eyes made me feel things in my backbone."
"But you're glad?" she laughed.
"Of course I'm glad; and I'm proud. But it's—queer."
She smiled at him understandingly; the understandingness of her smile always went beyond her words. It was a beautiful face upon which he watched the play of lights, saw the changing currents of thought and dreams and purpose. But the thing most rare in it, that which made one quite forget accepted standards, was the steadfastness with which a certain great light shone through the aura of her tenderness. There were moments in which she transcended both her beauty and her beauty's weaknesses.
As the flower to the sun, naturally, quietly, inevitably, she had expanded under the breath of life. With the fullness of a rich nature she had responded to the touch of the spirit of living. Love loved her for what she had been able to take.