That was the way the girls he drew would have walked had they ever lived.  Even in the midst of his fright his artist’s eyes noted that:  noted the perfect figure, too, and the witchery of its grace and contour, and the fascinating poise of her head, and the splendid color of her hair; noted mechanically the flowing lines of her gown, and the dainty modeling of arm and wrist and throat and ear.

Then, as she reached her bench and seated herself, she raised her eyes and looked at him.  And for the first time in his life he realized that ideal beauty was but the pale phantom of the real and founded on something more than imagination and thought; on something of vaster import than fancy and taste and technical skill; that it was founded on Life itself—­on breathing, living, palpitating, tremulous Life!—­from which all true inspiration must come.

Over and over to himself he was repeating:  “Of course, it is perfectly impossible that I can be in love already.  Love doesn’t happen between two ticks of a watch.  I am merely amazed at that girl’s beauty; that is all.  I am merely astounded in the presence of perfection; that is all.  There is nothing more serious the matter with me.  It isn’t necessary for me to continue to look at her; it isn’t vital to my happiness if I never saw her again. . . .  That is—­of course, I should like to see her, because I never did see living beauty such as hers in any woman.  Not even in my pictures.  What superb eyes!  What a fascinately delicate nose! What a nose!  By Heaven, that nose is a nose!  I’ll draw noses that way in future.  My pictures are all out of drawing; I must fit arms into their sockets the way hers fit!  I must remember the modeling of her eyelids, too—­and that chin! and those enchanting hands—­”

She looked up leisurely from her book, surveyed him calmly, absent-eyed, then bent her head again to the reading.

“There is something the matter with me,” he thought with a suppressed gulp.  “I—­if she looks at me again—­with those iris-hued eyes of a young goddess—­I—­I think I’m done for.  I believe I’m done for anyway.  It seems rather mad to think it.  But there is something the matter—­”

She deliberately looked at him again.

“It’s all wrong for them to let loose a girl like that on people,” he thought to himself, “all wrong.  Everybody is bound to go mad over her.  I’m going now.  I’m mad already.  I know I am, which proves I’m no lunatic.  It isn’t her beauty; it’s the way she wears it—­every motion, every breath of her.  I know exactly what her voice is like.  Anybody who looks into her eyes can see what her soul is like.  She isn’t out of drawing anywhere—­physically or spiritually.  And when a man sees a girl like that, why—­why there’s only one thing that can happen to him as far as I can see.  And it doesn’t take a year either.  Heavens!  How awfully remote from me she seems to be.”