"I'm not ashamed; I talk of going on."
She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes away from him.
"Oh, why—why—why?" she lamented.
It was on the tip of Stanwell's tongue to answer, "That I might say to you what I am just saying now—" but he replied instead: "A man may paint bad pictures and be a decent fellow. Look at Mungold, after all!"
The adjuration had an unexpected effect. Kate's colour faded suddenly, and she sat motionless, with a stricken face.
"There's a difference—" she began at length abruptly; "the difference you've always insisted on. Mr. Mungold paints as well as he can. He has no idea that his pictures are—less good than they might be."
"Well—?"
"So he can't be accused of doing what he does for money—of sacrificing anything better." She turned on him with troubled eyes. "It was you who made me understand that, when Caspar used to make fun of him."
Stanwell smiled. "I'm glad you still think me a better painter than Mungold. But isn't it hard that for that very reason I should starve in a hole? If I painted badly enough you'd see no objection to my living at the Waldorf!"
"Ah, don't joke about it," she murmured. "Don't triumph in it."