The devotion of the small hours to composition
does not steady one's hand for the reproduction of the
human muscles, or inform one's eye as to the correct
manipulation of flesh tints. Besides, the model suffered
from Elfrida an unconscious diminution of enthusiasm.
She was finding her first serious attempt at writing more
absorbing than she would have believed possible, and she
felt that she was doing it better than she expected. She
was hardly aware of the moments that slipped by while
she dabbled aimlessly in unconsidered color meditating
a phrase, or leaned back and let nothing interfere with
her apprehension of the atelier with the other reproductive
instinct. She did not recognize the deterioration in her
work, either; and at the very moment when Nadie Palicsky,
observing Lucien's neglect of her, inwardly called him
a brute, Elfrida was to leave the atelier an hour earlier
for the sake of the more urgent thing which she had to
do. She finished it in five days, and addressed it to
Frank Parke with a new and uplifting sense of
accomplishment. The ever fresh miracle happened to her,
too, in that the working out of one article begot the
possibilities of half a dozen more, and the next day saw
her well into another.
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