he made the girl, whom he had provisionally called Salome,
more like himself than Louise in certain superficial qualities, though
in an essential nobleness and singleness, which consisted with a great
deal of feminine sinuosity and subtlety, she remained a portrait of
Louise. He was doubtful whether the mingling of characteristics would
not end in unreality, but she was sure it would not; she said he was so
much like a woman in the traits he had borrowed from himself that Salome
would be all the truer for being like him; or, at any rate, she would be
finer, and more ideal. She said that it was nonsense, the way people
regarded women as altogether different from men; she believed they were
very much alike; a girl was as much the daughter of her father as of her
mother; she alleged herself as proof of the fact that a girl was often a
great deal more her father's daughter, and she argued that if Maxwell
made Salome quite in his own spiritual image, no one would dream of
criticising her as unwomanly. Then he asked if he need only make Atland
in her spiritual image to have him the manliest sort of fellow. She said
that was not what she meant, and, in any case, a man could have feminine
traits, and be all the nicer for them, but, if a woman had masculine
traits, she would be disgusting. At the same time, if you drew a man
from a woman, he would be ridiculous.

"Then you want me to model Atland on myself, too," said Maxwell.

She thought a moment. "Yes, I do. If Salome is to be taken mostly from
me, I couldn't bear to have him like anybody but you. It would be
indelicate."

"Well, now, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to stand it," said
Maxwell. "I am going to make Atland like Pinney."

But she would not be turned from the serious aspect of the affair by
his joking. She asked, "Do you think it would intensify the situation if
he were not equal to her? If the spectator could be made to see that she
was throwing herself away on him, after all?"

"Wouldn't that leave the spectator a little too inconsolable? You don't
want the love-business to double the tragedy, you want to have it
relieved, don't you?"

"Yes, that is true. You must make him worth all the sacrifice. I
couldn't stand it if he wasn't."

Maxwell frowned, as he always did when he became earnest, and said with
a little sigh, "He must be passive, negative, as I said; you must simply
feel that he is _good_, and that she will be safe with him, after the
worst ha