“Passionately I paint passion. I draw life out of life. And I wish them joy of their bottles and their Canadian apples and their muddy table napkins with the beastly folds in them that look like loops of tripe.” Once more Lypiatt disintegrated himself with laughter; then was silent. Mrs. Viveash nodded, slowly and reflectively. “I think you’re right,” she said. Yes, he was surely right; there must be life, life was the important thing. That was precisely why his paintings were so bad—she saw now; there was no life in them. Plenty of noise there was, and gesticulation and a violent galvanized twitching; but no life, only the theatrical show of it. There was a flaw in the conduit; somewhere between the man and his work life leaked out. He protested too much. But it was no good; there was no disguising the deadness. Her portrait was a dancing mummy. He bored her now. Did she even positively dislike him? Behind her unchanging pale eyes Mrs. Viveash wondered. But in any case, she reflected, one needn’t always like the people with whom one associates. There are music halls as well as confidential boudoirs; some people are admitted to the tea-party and the _tête-à-tête_, others, on a stage invisible, poor things! to themselves, do their little song-and-dance, roll out their characteristic patter, and having provided you with your entertainment are dismissed with their due share of applause. But then, what if they become boring? “Well,” said Lypiatt at last—he had stood there, motionless, for a long time, biting his nails, “I suppose we’d better begin our sitting.” He picked up the unfinished portrait and adjusted it on the easel. “I’ve wasted a lot of time,” he said, “and there isn’t, after all, so much of it to waste.” He spoke gloomily, and his whole person had become, all of a sudden, curiously shrunken and deflated. “There isn’t so much of it,” he repeated, and sighed. “I still think of myself as a young man, young and promising, don’t you know. Casimir Lypiatt—it’s a young, promising sort of name, isn’t it? But I’m not young, I’ve passed the age of promise. Every now and then I realize it, and it’s painful, it’s depressing.” Mrs. Viveash stepped up on to the model’s dais and took her seat. “Is that right?” she asked. Lypiatt looked first at her, then at his picture. Her beauty, his passion—were they only to meet on the canvas? Opps was her lover. Time was passing; he felt tired. “That’ll do,” he said and began painting. “How young are you?” he asked after a moment. “Twenty-five, I should imagine,” said Mrs. Viveash.