"And all this you're doing, all this waste of running about--have you then forgotten the picture?" It was as though he had shaken her suddenly awake. She stared at him in a shock of recollection. Why, of course--the picture. Why--incredible, but she had forgotten it. Actually forgotten it in the wild excitement of travelling; actually she had been wanting to linger at each new place, she who had only ten days altogether, she who had come only after all because of the picture, the great picture, the first really great thing that had touched her life. And here she was with him, its waiting creator, dragging him about who held future beauty in his cunning guided hand among all the mixed stuff left as a burden on the generations by the past, curious about the stuff with an uneducated stupid curiosity, wasting time, ridiculously blocking the way to something great, to the greatest of the achievements of a great artist. She was sobered. She was overcome by the vivid recognition of her cheap enthusiasm. "Oh," she said, staring up at him, wide awake, entirely ashamed, "how _patient_ you've been with me!" And as he still held her by the arm, his eyes blazing down at her from the top step of the crypt, she could find no way of expressing her shame and contrition except by bending her head and laying her cheek on his hand. CHAPTER XXXV They stood there for what seemed to the beadle at the bottom an intolerable time, the lady, evidently nobody certificated, with her cheek on the gentleman's hand, and he himself, as honest a man as ever wanted to get his tip and be done with it, kept waiting with nothing to do but curse and rattle his keys; and though it was summer the crypt was cold, and so would his feet be soon; and what could the world be coming to when people carried their caressings even into crypts? Becoming maddened by these delays the beadle cursed them both, their present, past, and future, roundly and thoroughly and also profanely--for by the accident of his calling he was very perfect in profanity--beneath his breath. "I'm so sorry, so sorry," Ingeborg was murmuring, who did nothing by halves, neither penitence, nor humility, nor gratitude. "My worshipped child," whispered Ingram, immensely moved by this swift change in her, and changed as swiftly himself by the softness of her cheek against his hand. "Oughtn't we to go to Venice to-night?" she asked, still standing in that oddly touching attitude of apology. "Not to-night." "But how can a picture get painted in just that little time?" "Ah, but you know I'm good at pictures." "But I can't stay a minute longer than Thursday. I have to be back on Saturday at the very latest." "You'll see. It will all be quite easy."