"Nonsense. You have wasted a few years, but you will have to work harder and buy back your lost time. Quentin Matsys did not begin to paint till he was older than you." "There were giants in those days. Compared with such men I am an invertebrate pigmy." "Oh, if you loved art you would not be content to live without the joy of it." "Yes, that's what people who look at pictures think--the joy of painting a thing like that. The man who paints knows when the disgust comes in and the joy goes out. He knows the sense of failure, the disappointment, the longing to fling his half-finished picture on the floor and perform the devil's dance upon it, as Müller used to do." And then, one day, as they were going round a picture gallery together, he said: "Well, Vera, I have been meditating on your lecture; and I am going to paint another picture--the last, perhaps." "No, it won't be the last." "I am going to paint your portrait. After all that sermonising you can't refuse to sit to me." "I won't refuse--unless Mario should object." "How should he object? He will be in New York, or Madrid, or Constantinople, most likely, while I am painting you. I am nothing if not an impressionist, so it mustn't be a long business." "I shall love sitting to you. To see you at work----" "Yes, to see me earning my bread in the sweat of my brow, like the day-labourer, will be a novelty. I shouldn't want to be paid for the picture, but I dare say Provana would insist upon my taking a fee, and as he counts in thousands, it would be a handsome one. No, Vera, don't blush! I won't take money for my daub. You shall give it to the Canine Defence League. It shall be a labour of love; a concession to a sermonising cousin. I shall paint your portrait, just to convince you that I can't paint, and that the life I am wasting is worth nothing." Thus in light talk and laughter the plan was made that brought them into a closer intimacy than they had known before, and although Claude Rutherford was an impressionist, that portrait was three months upon the easel which he had rigged up in Vera's morning-room. "I want to paint you in the room where you live; not with a marble pillar and a crimson curtain for a background." The sittings went on at irregular intervals, in a style that was at once sauntering and spasmodic, all through that season. Signor Provana looked in now and then, stood watching the painter at work for five or ten minutes, criticised, and made a sudden exit, driven away by Lady Susan's shrill chatter. But Lady Susan was not always there; and there were more tranquil hours, when Vera sat in her half-reclining attitude on a low sofa spread with a tiger skin, fanning herself with a great fan of peacock's feathers, and gazing at the pictures on the wall with dreaming eyes: hours in which the painter and his subject talked by fits and starts--with silent pauses.