"Shall I go to her?" thought the painter. "I made up my mind to keep clear of her for this year at least, and already I am tempted to waver. She won't leave me alone; she won't let me work in peace, and forget her if I can. What is it to her that I have worked and waited for twenty years to win the place I hold? What is it to her? She likes to see me in her drawing-room, and to exhibit me to the people amongst whom she lives. I suppose I am a kind of lion in my way, and that she likes to show me in my cage. What does it matter to her if she distracts me from my work? It pleases her to keep me in an intermittent fever of perplexity and despair. What am I to her amongst a hundred admirers? I am only something different from the rest of them. She has her museum of lovers, as she has her cabinets of china, her collection of antique silver, her orchids, her Angora cats: and I am a curious specimen of the genus painter--very hopeless. Shall I go to her to be fooled, as I have been fooled, year after year, ever since I have been worth a place in her exhibition? No, no, Mrs. Champernowne. _Nenni_, as the citizens of Ghent said to Philip van Artevelde. One might do something with Van Artevelde, by-the-bye, and the quaint old costumes, and the queer peaked roofs of the houses, and the infuriated _burghers_, clamorous for their leader's blood, _Nenni_. Mrs. Champernowne, I will not go near you. I have my great picture to paint between this and the 28th of April, and I have to hold my own against the critics; so I will send you my daughter with a pretty message, and I will invite you to my painting-room on the last day in April, with the connoisseurs and the amateurs, and the art-critics on the newspapers, and the unknown strangers who come to stare at the painter, under pretence of looking at his pictures." But when Mr. Crawford had spent about three hours at his easel, he laid down his pallet and brushes, and looked at the clock upon the mantelpiece--the infallible clock upon which weary models cast furtive glances as the day wore on, to see when another hour had expired, and another shilling had been earned. "I can't go on any longer without a young person, as Flo calls my professional model," said Mr. Crawford; "and I think I should like to show _her_ my sketch before I go seriously to work at the picture. Her taste is perfect, and she might suggest something; besides which it's getting too dark for work," added the painter, rather irrelevantly. The "she" of whom he spoke so vaguely was Mrs. Champernowne, and he wanted to find an excuse for going to her. He took a small canvas from amongst others leaning against the wall, and slipped it into a green-baize cover. He rang the bell, told the servant to fetch a cab, and then retired into a dressing-room that adjoined the larger chamber, where he exchanged his velvet painting-coat for the broadcloth of everyday life. CHAPTER XV. DELILAH.