"When they see your work they'll see that you're fit for still-life, at least."
"Oh!" said Cornelia, vexed at having been scared for nothing. "I guess they won't be in any great hurry about it."
"How magnificent!" said Miss Maybough. "Of course, with that calm of yours, you can wait, as if you had eternity before you. Do you know that you are terribly calm?"
Cornelia turned and gave her a long stare. Miss Maybough broke her bit of cake in two, and offered her half, and Cornelia took it mechanically, but ate her sandwich. "I feel as if I had eternity behind me, I've been in the Preparatory so long."
On the common footing this drop to the solid ground gave, Cornelia asked her how long.
"Well, it's the beginning of my second year, now. If they don't let me go to round hands pretty soon, I shall have to see if I can't get the form by modelling. That's the best way. I suppose it's my imagination; it carries me away so, and I don't see the thing as it is before me; that's what they say. But with the clay, I'll have to, don't you know. Well, you know some of the French painters model their whole picture in clay and paint it, before they touch the canvas, any way. I shall try it here awhile longer, and then if I can't get to the round in any other way, I'll take to the clay. If sculpture concentrates you more, perhaps I may stick to it altogether. Art is one, anyhow, and the great thing is to live it. Don't you think so?"
"I don't know," said Cornelia. "I'm not certain I know what you mean."
"You will," said Miss Maybough, "after you've been here awhile, and get used to the atmosphere. I don't believe I really knew what life meant before I came to the Synthesis. When you get to realizing the standards of the Synthesis, then you begin to breathe freely for the first time. I expect to pass the rest of my days here. I shouldn't care if I stayed till I was thirty. How old are you?"
"I'm going on twenty," said Cornelia. "Why?"
"Oh, nothing. You can't begin too young; though some people think you oughtn't to come before you're eighteen. I look upon my days before I came here as simply wasted. Don't you want to go out and sit on the stairs awhile?"