“It would be quite unheard-of,” she said. “I don’t live in the New Forest like Mr. Merivale, and cast conventions aside. No, we will walk up and down a little, and then you shall go and play. Do you know, I am really so pleased to have met you I have admired your pictures so. Do you find it a bore having that sort of thing said to you?”
Evelyn thought over this for a moment.
“Well, I think my pictures bore me when they are done,” he said, “though the opinion of other people never does. A picture is—is like a cold in the head. It possesses you while it is there, and you have to throw it off. And when it is thrown off, one never thinks of it again. At least, I don’t.”
They had come to the end of the terrace, and the girl stopped as they turned.
“And then you do another. Ah, how delightful to know that probably to the end of your life you will have things to do!”
“I don’t think you would say that if you had to do them,” said he. “Yet, I don’t know. Of course creating a thing is the biggest fun in the world. But how one tears one’s hair over it!”
Madge looked at his thick black thatch.
“You seem to have got some left,” she remarked.
“Yes, but I’m looking thinner. Mrs. Home told me so. Oh, look at the moon! What a dreadful thing to say, too! But it really is out of drawing—it is far too big!”
“Perhaps we are far too small,” said she.