"Ah," she said softly, "how unconscionably you must hare flattered me! I can't be so pretty as that." A look of relief shot across Kendal's face.

"I'm glad you like it," he said briefly.

"It's a capital pose." The first thing that could possibly be observed, about the portrait was its almost dramatic loveliness.

The head was turned a little, and the eyes regarded something distant, with a half wishful, half deprecating dreaminess.
The lips were plaintively courageous, and the line of the lifted chin and throat helped the pathetic eyes and annihilated the heaviness of the other features.

It was as if the face made an expressive effort to subdue a vitality which might otherwise have been aggressive; but while the full value of this effect of spiritual pose was caught and rendered, Kendal had done his work in a vibrant significant chord of color that strove for the personal force beneath it and brought it out.
Elfrida dropped into the nearest chair, clasped her knees in her hands, and bending forward, earnestly regarded the canvas with a silence that presently became perceptible.
It seemed to Kendal at first, as he stood talking to her of its technicalities, that she tested the worth of every stroke; then he became aware that she was otherwise occupied, and that she did not hear him.