The model was a young girl, hardly eighteen years old, who stood on a little platform opposite the sculptor, and, with her arms thrown up and backward, held fast by a rod that hung from the ceiling--for the statue held a tambourine in the hands flung upward with such _abandon_, and the _pose_ was none of the most comfortable. Still, the girl had borne it a good half hour already without complaining or asking for a rest. Although she had to hold her head far back, with its loosened auburn hair that fell below her waist, yet she followed with intense curiosity--her little eyes almost closed the while, so that the long golden-blond lashes lay upon her cheeks--every movement of the artist, every one of his critical and comparing glances. It seemed to flatter her beyond measure that her youthful beauty should be the subject of such conscientious study; and in this satisfaction to her vanity she forgot fatigue. And indeed she was of unusually slender and graceful form; and from the rough brown calico dress that was tightly fastened about her waist there sprung, like a fair flower from a coarse husk, a girlish figure of as perfect whiteness and delicacy as though the poor child had no other occupation but to care for her complexion. Her face was not exactly beautiful; a rather flat nose with broad nostrils projected above the large, half-opened mouth. But in the ill-formed jaws, that gave to the face something wild and almost like an animal, shone perfect and beautiful teeth; and a merry, innocent, childlike smile enlivened the full lips and the otherwise rather expressionless eyes. The complexion of her face, too, was of a brilliant, transparent white, spotted here and there by a few little freckles, of which there were two or three also on her neck and breast. It was comical to see how she herself shared in the study of her own beauty, as she found such serious attention given to it by another; and, as she saw her girlish self treated with such respect, she seemed to forget every trace of anything like coquetry, such as might otherwise have entered into the matter. "You must be tired, Zenz," said the sculptor. "Don't you want to rest awhile?" She shook her auburn hair with a laugh. "It is so cool here," she answered without stirring. "You don't feel your own weight at all in the open air like this--and besides, there's the sweet smell of the mignonette in the garden. I believe I could stand this way till night." "So much the better. I was just going to ask you if you were not cold, and didn't want a shawl over your shoulders. I don't need them now; I am just doing the arms."