galled and soaring nature? It is not a long time since the Middle Ages.
In the stretch of history centuries shrink to nothing, and the Middle
Ages are as the earlier hours of our own historic day. But has there not
been a change even within that short time? Did not the medieval
portrait-painters portray in their sitters great moods as no painter
portrays them now? How many painters of to-day can find great moods in
the faces of their sitters?

"And so I come again to your model. What makes her so remarkable, so
significant, so touching, so exquisite, so human, is the fact that her
face seems almost a survival out of a past in which the beacon-lights of
humanity did more openly appear on the features. In her case one
beacon-light most of all,--the greatest that has ever shone on the faces
of women,--the one which seems to be slowly vanishing from the faces of
modern women--the look of the mother: that transfiguration of the
countenance of the mother who believed that the birth of a child was the
divine event in her existence, and the emotions and energies of whose
life centered about her offspring. How often does any living painter
have his chance to paint that look now! Galleries are well filled with
portraits of contemporary women who have borne children: how often among
these is to be found the portrait of the mother of old?"

He rose. The talk was ended. He looked again at his watch, and said:

"It does not seem worth while to wait longer. Evidently your model has
been kept away to-day. Let us hope that no ill has befallen her and that
she will be here to-morrow. If she is here, we shall go on with the
portrait. If she should not be here, I shall have another model ready,
and we shall take up another study until she returns. Bring fresh
canvases."