Margery frowned. This theory of Frank's was her pet aversion, but she could not get him to give it up. "Then do you mean to say that all effort is valueless?" "No, no!" cried Frank; "the whole process of production is frantic, passionate effort to realize what one sees. But no amount of effort will make one see anything. I could do you a picture, which you would probably think very pretty, every day, if you liked, of 'Love in a Cottage,' or some such inanity." Jack crossed his legs, thoughtfully. "The great objection of love in a cottage," he said, "is that it is so hard to find a really suitable cottage." Frank laughed. "A courageous attempt to change the subject," he said. "But I'm not going to talk nonsense to-night." "I think you're talking awful nonsense, dear," said Margery, candidly. "You will see I am serious in a minute," said Frank. "I was saying I could paint that sort of thing at any time, but it would not be part of me. And the only pictures worth doing are those which are part of one's self. Every real picture tells you, of course, something about what it represents; but it tells you a great deal about the man who painted it, and that is the most important of the two. And I cannot--and, what is more, I don't choose to--paint anything into which I do not put part of myself." "Mind you look about the woods after I've gone," said Jack, "and if you see a leg or an arm of mine lying about, send it to me, Beach Hotel, New Quay." Frank threw himself back in his chair with a laugh. "My dear Jack," he said, "for a clever man you are a confounded idiot. No one ever accused you of putting a nail-paring of your own into any of your pictures. Of course you are a landscape-painter--that makes a certain difference. A landscape-painter paints what he sees, and only some of that; a portrait-painter--a real portrait-painter--paints what he knows and feels, and when he paints the virtue goes out of him." "And the more he knows, the more virtue goes out of him, I suppose," said Jack. "You know yourself pretty well--what will happen when you paint yourself?" Frank grew suddenly grave. "That's exactly what I want to know myself. That was what I meant when I said I felt like a little boy going to school for the first time--it will be something new. I have only painted four portraits in my life, and each of them definitely took something out of me--changed me; and from each--I am telling you sober truth--I absorbed something of the sitter. And when I paint myself--" "I suppose you will go out like a candle," interrupted Jack. "Total disappearance of a rising English artist; and of the portrait, what? Shall we think it is you? Will it walk about and talk? Will it get your vitality?" Frank got quickly out of his chair and stood before them. His thin, tall figure looked almost ghostly in the strange half-light, and he spoke rapidly and excitedly.