Jack entered alone, saying that Mary and Imogen were gone to take off their wraps. Yes, he assured Valerie, they had promised to keep on their Grecian robes for tea.
Valerie introduced him to the Pakenhams and led the congratulations on his triumph. "For it really is yours, Jack, as much as if you had painted the whole series of pictures."
Jack, looking shy, turned from one to the other as they seconded her enthusiasm,—Mrs. Pakenham, with her elaborately formal head and china-blue eyes; her husband, robust and heavy; Sir Basil, still with his benignant, unseeing quality. Among them all, in spite of Mrs. Wake's keen, familiar visage, in spite of Valerie's soft glow, he felt himself a stranger. He even felt, with a little stab of ill-temper, that there had been truth in Imogen's diagnosis. They were kindly, but they were tremendously indifferent. They didn't at all expect you to be interested in them; but that hardly atoned for the fact that they weren't interested in you. For Jack, life was made up of vigilant, unceasing interest, in himself and in everybody else.
"Ah, were they all taken from your pictures?" Sir Basil asked him, strolling up to the mantelpiece to examine a photograph of Imogen that stood there.
Jack explained that he could claim no such gallery of achievement. He had made a few sketches for each tableau; his work had been, in the main, that of stage-manager.
"Oh, I see," said Sir Basil, not at all abashed by his blunder. "Nicer than lay figures to work with, eh? all those pretty young women."
"I don't use lay figures, at any time. I'm a landscape painter," Jack explained, somewhat stiffly. He surmised that had he been introduced as Velasquez Sir Basil would have been quite as unmoved, just as he would have been quite as genially inclined had he been introduced as a scene-painter.
"I used to think I'd go in for something of that sort in my young days," said Sir Basil, holding Imogen's photograph; "and I dabbled a bit in water-color for a time. Do you remember that little sketch of the Hall, done from the beech avenue, Mrs. Upton? Not so bad, was it?"
"Not at all bad," said Valerie; "but we can't use such negatives for Jack's work. It's very seriously good, you know. It's anything but dabbling."
"Oh, yes; I know that you are a real artist," Sir Basil smiled at Jack from the photograph. "This doesn't do her justice, does it?"