"Do you realise," he said, leaning forward and staring at her with his strange pale eyes, "what it means to be painted by me?"
"My utter glorification," she answered, "my utter pride."
He waved his hand impatiently. "It means," he said, "and in this case it would supremely mean, another one added to the great possessions of the world."
"Oh," said Ingeborg; and then, after a slight holding of her breath, again "Oh."
She was awe-struck. His voice came out of the black shadow of him at her through clenched teeth, which gave it a strange awe-striking quality. She felt, with the sunset blinding her and that black figure in front of her and the intense clenchedness of the voice issuing from it, in the presence of immensities. She wondered whether it would have been any worse—instantly she corrected the word (it had been the merest slip of her brain) to more glorious—to be sitting in a punt with, simultaneously, Shakespeare, Sophocles. Homer, and the entire Renaissance. Weak a thing though her paddle was she pressed it tightly in her arms.
"It's—a great responsibility," she said lamely.
"Of course it is," he said, still in that clenched voice. "And it has to be met greatly."
"But what have I—"
"Here's this picture—I feel it in me, I tell you I feel it and know it—going to be the crowning work of my life, going to be a thing of living beauty throughout the generations, going to be the Portrait of a Lady that draws the world to look at it during all the ages after we are dead—"
He broke off. He left off hurling the sentences at her. He began to beg.