The first afternoon was given to trying her in this light and that, and studying her from different points. She wished to stand before her easel, in her Synthesis working-dress, with her palette on her thumb, and a brush in her other hand. He said finally, "Why not?" and Cornelia made a tentative sketch of her.
At the end of the afternoon he waited while the girl was putting on her hat in Charmian's room, where she smiled into the glass at Charmian's face over her shoulder, thinking of the intense fidelity her friend had shown throughout to her promise of unconsciousness.
"Didn't I do it magnificently?" Charmian demanded. "It almost killed me; but I meant to do it if it did kill me; and now his offering to see you aboard the car shows that he is determined to do it, too, if it kills him. I call it masterly."
"Well, don't go and spoil it now," said Cornelia. "And if you're going to ask me every day how you've done——"
"Oh, I'm not! Only the first day and the last day!"
"Well!"
As Ludlow walked with Cornelia toward the point where she was to take her car down town, he began, "You see, she is so dramatic, that if you tried to do her in any other way—that is, simply—you would be doing her artificially. You have to take her as she is, don't you think?"
"I don't know as I think Charmian is acting all the time, if that's what you mean," said Cornelia. "Or any of the time, even."
Ludlow wished she had said she did not know that instead of as, but he reflected that ninety Americans out of a hundred, lettered or unlettered, would have said the same. "Oh, I don't at all mean that she is, intentionally. It's because it's her nature that I want to recognize it. You think it is her nature, don't you?" he asked deferentially.
"Oh, I suppose it is," she answered; it amused her to have him take such a serious tone about Charmian.