g and a hero
becomes a clown. The case of 'Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay'
is not so bad as that of an idealist whose neck has cracked."

"I'm dreadfully disappointed in that boy," said Mrs. Ascher. "Will you
forgive me if I do not talk of him? Even now I cannot bear to."

She sighed heavily, showing how much she felt the loss of Tim's soul.
Then she turned to me with one of those bright smiles, one of those
charmingly bright smiles, which are the greatest achievements of serious
women. Very religious women, women with artists' souls and the intenser
suffragists have these bright smiles. They work them up, I suppose, so
as to show that they can be as cheerful as any one else when they choose
to try.

"Come and see what I'm doing now," she said.

I looked very carefully at the man's figure in front of her.

"This," she said, "is manhood, virility, energy, simple strength,
directness, all that this poor neurotic world is yearning for, the
primal force, uncomplex, untroubled, just the exultation of the delight
of being."

"It reminds me faintly of some one," I said, "the head and face, I mean;
but I can't quite fix the likeness."

She clapped her hands with delight.

"You see it," she said, "I am so glad. It's not meant to be a mere
likeness. I need not tell you that. Still I'm glad you see that it
resembles him. I am working to express his soul, the mere features,
the limbs, are nothing. The being which burns within, that is what I am
trying to express. But the fact that you see the external likeness makes
me feel more sure that my interpretation of the physical features is the
right one."

"Surely," I said, "it's not Gorman, the other Gorman, the elder Gorman,
Michael!"

"Yes," she said.

"Has he been sitting for you?" I asked.

I stopped myself just in time. I was very nearly saying "sitting to you
like that?" The figure on which she was at work was entirely undraped.
I do not suppose that Mrs. Ascher would have been the least embarrassed
even if I had said "like that." The artist's soul scorns conventions.
But I should have felt awkward if she had answered "Yes."

"Not exactly sitting to me," she said. "He just comes here and talks.
While he talks I catch glimpses of his great, buoyant, joyous soul and
fashion the poor clay to express it."

"I did not know he was back in New York," I said.

"Oh, yes, he has been here a week, perhaps more. To me it seems as if he
had been here for ever."