, at the end of a year Peter
Champneys had made great strides. But he was troubled. Like Millet,
he couldn't take the ordered direction. He felt that he was merely
marking time, that he wasn't on the right track. His robust and
original talent demanded heartier food than was offered it.
Reluctantly enough, Peter withdrew from the official studio to which
he was attached, and went on his own. It was a momentous step.

One Sunday afternoon he said to Emma Campbell, seriously:

"You've never laid eyes on a goddess, Emma, have you? Or a nymph?
Well, neither have I. And I can't paint what I don't know." He
walked up and down the little graveled garden path. And he burst
out: "That is not life. It is not truth. I don't want gods. I only
see _men_! I don't want goddesses. I want _women_!"

Emma Campbell said in a scandalized voice:

"Dat ain't no kind o' way to talk! Leastwise," she compromised, "not
on Sundays."

Peter burst out laughing. Emma wore her usual Sunday cashmere, with
a snowy apron and head-handkerchief. Satan lay upon the small table
beside her, in the attitude of a sphinx, his black, velvety paws
stretched in front of him, his inscrutable eyes watching the
restless young man. Peter paused, and his eyes narrowed. Then he
snapped his fingers, as he had done when he was a little boy back in
Riverton and something had pleased him.

"I've got it!" he shouted. "Emma, you're It!"

No one ever had a more patient model. She couldn't exackly
understan' why Mist' Peter should want to paint a ole nigger like
her, but if Peter Champneys had wanted to bury her alive in the
ground, with only her head sticking out, Emma would have known it
had to be all right, somehow. So she sat for weary hours, while
Peter made rough sketches, and tried out many theories, before he
settled down to work in dead earnest.

And presently Emma saw herself as it were alive on a square of
canvas, so alive that she was more than a bit afraid. She said it
looked like her own ha'nt, and Emma wasn't partial to ha'nts. There
she sat in her plain black dress and her plain white apron and
head-handkerchief, and her gold hoop ear-rings. On the table beside
her were the vegetables she was to prepare. She had forgotten work
for the time being. Emma projecked, one hand resting idly on the
table, the other on the great black cat in her lap. She looked at
you, with the wistfully animal look of a negro woman, who is loving,
patient, kind, long-sufferin