Then as though she
had become disciplined through years of necessity to do the unworthy
things that must be done, she stepped resolutely though unsteadily upon
the platform. A long procession of men and women had climbed thither
from many a motive on life's upward or downward road.
He had specially chosen a chair for a three-quarter portrait, stately,
richly carved; about it hung an atmosphere of high-born things.
Now, the body has definite memories as the mind has definite memories,
and scarcely had she seated herself before the recollections of former
years revived in her and she yielded herself to the chair as though she
had risen from it a moment before. He did not have to pose her; she had
posed herself by grace of bygone luxurious ways. A few changes in the
arrangement of the hands he did make. There was required some separation
of the fingers; excitement caused her to hold them too closely together.
And he drew the entire hands into notice; he specially wished them to be
appreciated in the portrait. They were wonderful hands: they looked
eloquent with the histories of generations; their youthfulness seemed
centuries old. Yet all over them, barely to be seen, were the marks of
life's experience, the delicate but dread sculpture of adversity.
For a while it was as he had foreseen.
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