Why don't you ask me?
Do you think I'd refuse ?" "It's so beastly cold to ask you to stand still----" "Cold! Why, it's much warmer; it's ten above zero.

I'll stand wherever you wish.

Where do you want me; here above you, against the snow and sky ?" The transcendent loveliness of the picture she made set that excited thrill quivering through every vein; but he took a matter-of-fact grip on his emotions because good work is done in cold blood, even if it sometimes may be conceived in exaltation.
"Don't move," he said serenely; "you are exactly right as you stand.
Tell me the very moment you feel cold.

Promise ?" "Yes, dear." His freezing colours bothered him, and at times he used them almost like pastels.

He worked rapidly, calmly, and with that impersonal precision that made every brush stroke an integral factor in the ensemble.
At almost any stage of the study the accidental brilliancy of his progress might have been terminated abruptly, leaving a sketch rarely beautiful in its indicated and unfinished promise.
But the pitfalls of the accidental had no allurements for him.