He also felt that never
before had he seen a face that would seem to him so hideous in its
perversion.
He threw down his brush and palette in despair and again gave himself
up to his fancies. He then sketched in outline the beautiful face
as expressing joy, hope, courage, thought or love, but was provoked
to find that he ever obtained the best likeness when portraying
the vanity, silliness, or petulance which had been the only
characteristics he had seen.
He now grew metaphysical and tried to analyze the girl's mind.
He sought to grope mentally his way back into the recesses of the
soul, which had looked, acted, and spoken the previous evening.
A strange little place he imagined it, and oddly furnished. It
occurred to him that it bore a resemblance to her dressing room,
and was full of queer feminine mysteries and artificial ideas that
had been created by conventional society rather than inspired by
nature.
He asked himself, "Can it be that here is a character in which the
elements of a true and good woman do not exist? Has she no heart,
no mind, no conscience worthy of the name? At her age she cannot
have lost these qualities. Have they never been awakened? Do
they exist to that degree that they can be aroused into controlling
activity? I suppose there can be pretty idiots.
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