Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/65



great picture was begun. In one corner of Anne Bradford's studio Helen posed for Art, asleep. The picture was to be symbolic. It was the old myth of the Sleeping Beauty worked over with a modern interpretation. A lovely woman, dreaming, with half-shut eyes: that was Art. A ragged figure creeping up and putting a wasted hand through the hedge of thorn: that was Need. The sleeper was to be awakened, not by the old-fashioned lover's kiss, but by a cry for the new, better, all-embracing love, the love of human kind.

"I simply can't do my work for watching you," said Anne at the first sitting. "I am eager to see how you are going to paint all those ideas about art and the people."

"I am not going to paint. I am going to suggest," answered Howard. 57