"I posed for Mr. Watkins, R.A., last year," she said. "The picture was in the Academy. Did you see it? It was beautiful."
The mere name of Mr. Watkins ("R.A.") made every drop of æsthetic blood in my body curdle. A conscienceless old prater of the soap and salve school, with not as much idea of drawing or value as a two-year Julianite.
"I don't quite remember," I said, rather faintly; "what was—the picture called?"
"'Faith Conquers Fear,'" said Miss Jones. "I posed as a Christian maiden, you know, tied to a stake in the Roman amphitheatre and waiting martyrdom. The maiden was in a white robe, her hair hanging over her shoulders (perhaps you would not recognize me in this costume), looking up, her hands crossed on her breast. Before her stood a jibing Roman. One could see it all; the contrast between the base product of a vicious civilization and the noble maiden. One could read it all in their faces; hers supreme aspiration, his brutal hatred. It was superb. It made one want to cry."
Miss Jones, while speaking, looked so exceedingly beautiful that I almost forgot my dismay at her atrocious taste; for Watkins's "Faith Conquers Fear" had been one of the jokes of the year—a lamentably crude, pretentious presentation of a theatrical subject reproduced extensively in ladies' papers and fatally popular.
At the same moment, and as I looked from Miss Jones's gravely enrapt expression to Manon's seductive graces, I experienced a sensation of extreme discomfort.
"I think a picture should have high and noble aims," Miss Jones pursued, seeing that I remained silent, and evidently considering the time come when duty required her to speak and to speak freely. "A picture should leave one better for having seen it."
I could not ignore the kind but firmly severe criticism implied; I could not but revolt from this Hebraistic onslaught.
"I don't admit a conscious moral aim in art," I said. "Art need only concern itself with being beautiful and interesting; the rest will follow. But a badly-painted picture certainly makes me feel wicked, and when I go to the National Gallery to have a look at the Velasquezes and Veroneses I feel the better for it."
"Velasquez?" Miss Jones repeated. "Ah, well, I prefer the old masters—I mean those who painted religious subjects as no one since has painted them. Why did not Velasquez, at least, as he could not rise to the ideal, paint beautiful people? I never have been able to care for mere ugliness, however cleverly copied."