e Manon of my
dreams stood before me. The expression certainly was wanting; I should
have to compass it by analogy. My imagination had grasped it, and I
should realize the type by the aid of Miss Jones's pale face, narrowing
to a chin the French would call _mutin_, her curled lips and curiously
set eyes, wide apart, and the brows that swept ever so slightly upward.
The very way in which her fair hair grew in a little peak on the
forehead, and curved silky and unrippled to a small knot placed high,
fulfilled my aspirations, though the hair must be powdered and in it the
vibrating black of a bow.

Miss Jones stood very well, conscientiously and with intelligence. Pose
and effect were soon decided upon, and in a day or two I was regularly
at work, delighting in it, and with a sensation of power and certainty I
had rarely experienced.

Carrington came in quite frequently, and, looking from my canvas to Miss
Jones, would pronounce the drawing wonderfully felt.

"Degas wouldn't be ashamed of the line of the neck," he said. "The turn
and lift of her head as she looks sideways in the mirror is really
_emouvant_, life; good idea; in character; centred on herself; not bent
on conquest and staring it at you. Manon had not that trait."

Miss Jones on the stand gazed obediently into the mirror, the dim white
of an eighteenth century boudoir about her. She was altogether a most
_posee_, well-behaved young person.

One could not call her manner discreet; it was far too self-confident
for that. Her silence was natural, not assumed. During the rests she
would return to a book.

I asked her one day what she was reading. She replied, looking up with
polite calm:

"'Donovan.'"

"Oh!" was all I could find in comment. It did rather surprise me in a
girl whose eyes were set in that most appreciative way and whose father,
as a socialistic bookbinder, might have inculcated more advanced
literary tastes. Still, she was very young; this fact seemed emphasized
by the innocent white the back of her neck presented to me as she
returned to her reading.

When I came to painting, I found that my good luck accompanied me, and
that inspiring sense of mastery. Effort, yes; but achievement followed
it with a sort of inevitableness. I tasted the joys of the arduous
facility which is the fruition of years of toil.

The limpid grays seemed to me to equal Whistler's; the pinks--flaming in
shadow, silvered in the light--suggested Velasquez to my ha