Part 9 (2/2)

Obedient to the thought processes of her s.e.x, she made a bee line to the particular.

”Oh, Paul, I hope you're not angry.”

”At what?”

”At what I said about your being a model.”

”Not a bit,” said he. ”If I hadn't wanted to know your opinion, I wouldn't have asked you.”

She brightened. ”You really wanted to know what I thought?”

”Naturally,” said Paul. ”You're the most commonsense girl I've ever met.”

Paul walked soberly home. Jane accompanied him--on wings.

On Monday Paul went to the Life School and stripped with a heavy heart.

Jane was right. It was not a man's job. The fact, too, of his doing it lowered him in her esteem, and though he had no romantic thoughts whatever with regard to Jane, he enjoyed being Lord Paramount in her eyes. He went into the studio and took up his pose; and as he stood on the model throne, conspicuous, glaring, the one startling central object, Higgins's ”How beastly!” came like a material echo and smote him in the face. He felt like Adam when he first proceeded to his primitive tailoring. A wave of shame ran through him. He looked around the great silent room, at the rows of students, each in front of an easel, using his naked body for their purposes. A phrase flashed across his mind--in three years his reading had brought vocabulary--they were using his physical body for their spiritual purposes. For the moment he hated them all fiercely. They were a band of vampires. Habit and discipline alone saved him from breaking his pose and fleeing headlong.

But there he was fixed, like marble, in an athlete's att.i.tude, showing rippling muscles of neck and chest and arms and thighs all developed by the gymnasium into the perfection of Greek beauty, and all useless, more useless even, as far as the world's work was concerned, than the muscles of a racehorse. There he was fixed, with outstretched limbs and strained loins, a human being far more alive than the peering, measuring throng, far more important, called by a destiny infinitely higher than theirs. And none of them suspected it. For the first time he saw himself as they saw him. They admired him as a thing, an animal trained especially for them, a prize bullock. As a human being they disregarded him. Nay, in the depth of their hearts they despised him.

Not one of them would have stood where he did. He would have considered it--rightly--as degrading to his manhood.

The head of the school snapped his fingers impatiently and fussed up to the model-stand. ”What's the matter? Tired already? Take it easy for a minute, if you like.”

”No,” said Paul, instinctively stiffening himself. ”I'm never tired.”

It was his boast that he could stand longer in a given pose than any other model, and thereby he had earned reputation.

”Then don't go to pieces, my boy,” said the head of the school, not unkindly. ”You're supposed to be a Greek athlete and not Venus rising from the sea or a jelly at a children's party.”

Paul flushed all over, and insane anger shook him. How dared the man speak to him like that? He kept the pose, thinking wild thoughts. Every moment the strain grew less bearable, the consciousness of his degradation more intense. He longed for something to happen, something dramatic, something that would show the vampires what manner of man he was. He was histrionic in his anguish.

A fly settled on his back--a damp, sluggish fly that had survived the winter--and it crawled horribly up his spine. He bore it for a few moments, and then his over-excited nerves gave way and he dashed his hand behind him. Somebody laughed. He raised his clenched fists and glared at the cla.s.s.

”Ay, yo' can laugh--you can laugh till yo' bust!” he cried, falling back into his Lancas.h.i.+re accent. ”But yo'll never see me, here agen.

Never, never, never, so help me G.o.d!”

He rushed away. The head of the school followed him and, while he was dressing, reasoned with him.

”Nay,” said Paul. ”Never agen. Aw'm doan wi' th' whole business.”

And as Paul walked home through the hurrying streets, he thought regretfully of twenty speeches which would have more adequately signified his indignant retirement from the profession.

CHAPTER VI

PAUL'S model-self being dead, he regarded it with complacency and set his foot on it, little doubting that it was another stepping-stone.

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