But her quite literal and correct explanation of Mr. Osborne’s joke was fatal to the joke; it was a pricked bladder, it would never be repeated any more.
Then came the deposition of the Royal Academician. Mr. Dennison had finished his picture of the upper glen only that afternoon, and the occasion was therefore solemn. So was he.
“Yes, Lady Dover,” he was saying, “I only touched the canvas a dozen times to-day, yet I have done, as I said, a full day’s work. C’est le dernier pas qui coûte; it is on those last touches that the whole thing depends. I knew when I went out this morning that I had not got what I meant; I knew, too, that it was nearly there, and it is that “nearly” that is yet so far. There was the shadow of a cloud, if you remember, over the bank of gorse.”
“Oh, I thought that shadow was quite perfect,” said Lady Dover. “I hope you have not touched it.”
“It has gone,” said Mr. Dennison, as if announcing the death of a near relation who had left him money, for though his voice was mournful, there was a hint of something comfortable coming. “Gone. I saw I could not do it so as to make it true.”
He looked up at this tragic announcement and caught Evelyn’s eye.
“Mr. Dundas, I am sure, will bear me out,” he said. “We poor artists are bound, however it limits us, to put down only what we know is true. We are not poets but chroniclers.”
“Oh, Evelyn, and you’ve been telling such lies about me,” said Madge, from the other side.
“Chroniclers,” resumed Mr. Dennison. “When we feel sure we are right we record our impression. But unless that certainty of vision comes to us, we must be honest, we must not attempt a vague impression merely. Is it not so?”
Evelyn’s face looked extraordinarily vital and boyish as he leaned forward.