Mrs. Westley showed her amusement at this, but Ludlow answered gravely that there was a certain reason in the position. "If she's disappointed in not having any portrait, though," he added, "she had better take Miss Saunders's." "Do you really mean that?" Mrs. Westley asked, with more or less of that incredulity concerning the performance of a woman which all the sex feel, in spite of their boasting about one another. "Has she so much talent?" "Why not? Somebody has to have the talent." This was like Wetmore's tone, and it made Mrs. Westley think of him. "And do you believe she could get her picture into the exhibition?" "Has Wetmore been talking to you about it?" "Yes." "I don't know," said Ludlow. "That was Wetmore's notion." "And does she know about it?" "I mentioned it to her." "It would be a great thing for her if she could get her picture in--and sell it." "Yes," Ludlow dryly admitted. He wished he had never told Mrs. Westley how Cornelia had earned the money for her studies at the Synthesis; he resented the implication of her need, and Mrs. Westley vaguely felt that she had somehow gone wrong. She made haste to retrieve her error by suggesting, "Perhaps Miss Maybough would object, though." "That's hardly thinkable." said Ludlow lightly. He would have gone away without making Mrs. Westley due return for the trouble she had taken for him with Mrs. Maybough, and she was so far vexed that she would have let him go without telling him that she was going to have his _protegee_ pour tea for her; she had fancied that this would have pleased him. But by one of those sudden flashes that seem to come from somewhere without, he saw himself in the odious light in which she must see him, and he turned in time. "Mrs. Westley, I think you have taken a great deal more pains for me than I'm worth. It's difficult to care what such a poor little Philistine as Mrs. Maybough--the mere figment of somebody else's misgotten money--thinks of me. But she _is_ to be regarded, and I know that you have looked after her in my interest; and it's very kind of you, and very good--it's like you. If you've done it, though, with the notion of my keeping on in portraits, or getting more portraits to paint, I'm sorry, for I shall not try to do any. I'm not fit for that kind of work. I don't say it because I despise the work, but because I despise myself. I should always let some wretched preoccupation of my own--some fancy, some whim--come between me and what I see my sitter to be, and paint that." "That is, you have some imagination," she began, in defence of him against himself. "No, no! There's scope for the greatest imagination, the most intense feeling, in portraits. But I can't do that kind of thing, and I must stick to my little sophistical fantasies, or my bald reports of nature. But Miss Saunders, if she were not a woman--excuse me!----" "Oh, I understand!"