“How charming of you!” she returned.  “To be made the subject of an artist’s dream—­really it is quite the nicest compliment I have ever received.  Tell me, do you like me in this?” she slipped the wrap she wore from her shoulders, and stood before him, gowned in the simple, gray dress of a Quaker Maid.  Deliberately, she turned her beautiful self about for his critical inspection.  Moving to and fro, sitting, half-reclining, standing—­in various graceful poses she invited, challenged, dared, his closest attention—­professional attention, of course—­to every curve and detail.

In spite of its simplicity of color and line, the gown still bore the unmistakable stamp of the wearer’s world.  The severity of line was subtly made to emphasize the voluptuousness of the body that was covered but not hidden.  The quiet color was made to accentuate the flesh the dress concealed only to reveal.  The very lack of ornament but served to center the attention upon the charms that so loudly professed to scorn them.  It was worldliness speaking in the quiet voice of religion.  It was vulgarity advertising itself in terms of good taste.  She had made modesty the handmaiden of blatant immodesty, and the daring impudence of it all fairly stunned the painter.

“Oh dear!” she said, watching his face, “I fear you don’t like it, at all—­and I thought it such a beautiful little gown.  You told me to wear whatever I pleased, you know.”

“It is a beautiful gown,” he said—­then added impulsively, “and you are beautiful in it.  You would be beautiful in anything.”

She shook her head; favoring him with an understanding smile.  “You say that to please me.  I can see that you don’t like me this way.”

“But I do,” he insisted.  “I like you that way, immensely.  I was a bit surprised, that’s all.  You see, I thought, of course, that you would select an evening gown of some sort—­something, you know, that would fit your social position—­your place in the world.  In this costume, the beauty of your shoulders—­”

Lowering her eyes as if embarrassed, she said coldly, “The beauty of my shoulders is not for the public.  I have never worn—­I will not wear—­one of those dreadful, immodest gowns.”

Aaron King was bewildered.  Suddenly, he remembered what Conrad Lagrange had said about her fad.  But after so frankly exhibiting herself before him, dressed as she was in a gown that was deliberately planned to advertise her physical charms, to be particular about baring her shoulders in a conventional costume—!  It was quite too much.

“Again, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Taine,” he managed to say.  “I did not know.  Under the circumstances, this is exactly the thing.  Your portrait, in what is so frankly a costume assumed for the purpose, takes us out of the dilemma very nicely, indeed.”