Aaron King gravely held out his hand with the package of letters, saying quietly, “They are from my mother.”

And the woman had sufficient grace to blush, for once, with unfeigned shame.

When he had received her apologies, and, putting aside the letters, had succeeded in making her forget the incident, he said, “And now, if you are ready, shall we begin?”

For some time the painter stood before the picture on his easel, without touching palette or brush, studying the face of the woman who posed for him.  By a slight movement of her eyes, without turning her head, she could look him fairly in the face.  Presently as he continued to gaze at her so intently, she laughed; and, with a little shrug of her shoulders and a pretense as of being cold, said, “When you look at me that way, I feel as though you had surprised me at my bath.”

The artist turned his attention instantly to his color-box.  While setting his palette, with his eyes upon his task, he said deliberately, “’Venus Surprised at the Bath.’  Do you know that you would make a lovely Venus?”

With a low laugh, she returned, daringly.  “Would you care to paint me as the Goddess of Love?”

He, still, did not look at her; but answered, while, with deliberate care, he selected a few brushes from the Chinese jar near the easel, “Venus is always a very popular subject, you know.”

She did not speak for a moment or two; and the painter felt her watching him.  As he turned to his canvas—­still careful not to look in her direction—­she said, suggestively, “I suppose you could change the face so that no one would know it was I who posed.”

The man remembered her carefully acquired reputation for modesty, but held to his purpose, saying, as if considering the question seriously, “Oh, as for that part; it could be managed with perfect safety.”  Then, suddenly, he turned his eyes upon her face, with a gaze so sharp and piercing that the blood slowly colored neck and cheek.

But the painter did not wait for the blush.  He had seen what he wanted and was at work—­with the almost savage intensity that had marked his manner while he had worked upon the portrait of Sibyl Andres.

And so, day after day, as he painted, again, the portrait of the woman who Conrad Lagrange fancifully called “The Age,” the artist permitted her to betray her real self—­the self that was so commonly hidden from the world, under the mask of a pretended culture, and the cloak of a fraudulent refinement.  He led her to talk of the world in which she lived—­of the scandals and intrigues among those of her class who hold such enviable positions in life.  He drew from her the philosophies and beliefs and religions of her kind.  He encouraged her to talk of art—­to give her understanding of the world of artists as she knew it, and to express her real opinions and tastes in pictures and books.  He persuaded her to throw boldly aside the glittering, tinsel garb in which she walked before the world, and so to stand before him in all the hideous vulgarity, the intellectual poverty and the moral depravity of her naked self.