the
foundations of your work.

"But among a hundred models there might not be one to arouse such
emotion. Actually in the world, among the thousands of people we know,
how few stir in us our best, force us to our best! It is the rarest
experience of our lifetimes that we meet a man or a woman who literally
drives us to the realization of what we really are and can really do
when we do our best. What we all most need in our careers is the one who
can liberate within us that lifelong prisoner whose doom it is to remain
a captive until another sets it free--our best. For we can never set our
best free by our own hands; that must always be done by another."

They were listening to him with a startled recognition of their inmost
selves. He went on to drive home his point about the stranger:

"I am going to introduce to you, then, a model who beyond all the others
you have worked with will liberate in you your finer selves. It is a
rare opportunity. Do not thank me. I did not find her. Life's storms
have blown her violently against the walls of the art school; we must
see to it at least that she be not further bruised while it becomes her
shelter, her refuge. Who she is, what her life has been, where she comes
from, how she happens to arrive here--these are privacies into which of
course we do not intrude. Immediately behind herself she drops a curtain
of silence which shuts away every such sign of her past. But there are
other signs of that past which she cannot hide and which it is our
privilege, our duty, the province of our art, to read. They are written
on her face, on her hands, on her bearing; they are written all over
her--the bruises of life's rudenesses, the lingering shadows of dark
days, the unwounded pride once and the wounded pride now, the
unconquerable will, a soaring spirit whose wings were meant for the
upper air but which are broken and beat the dust. All these are sublime
things to paint in any human countenance; they are the footprints of
destiny on our faces. The greatest masters of the brush that the world
has ever known could not have asked for anything greater. When you
behold her, perhaps some of you may think of certain brief but eternal
words of Pascal: 'Man is a reed that bends but does not break.' Such is
your model, then, a woman with a great countenance; the fighting face of
a woman at peace. Now out upon the darkened battle-field of this
woman's face shines one serene sun, and it is that sun