“I’m glad.”

“I might paint you again,—like this. No, I swear I won’t. I got the thing itself down on canvas. I’ll never try to paint you again.”

“Is—that flattering?”

“Supremely.”

“When am I going to have my picture?” she asked after another interlude. “Do you want me to send for it?”

“I can’t give you the picture,” he said. “I intended to if I had done merely a portrait, but I can’t part with this. It has got to make my fame and fortune.”

“I thought I was to have it,” Nancy said. “I—I—” then she felt she was being ungenerous, unworthy, “but I couldn’t take it, of course, it’s too valuable.”

207

“Please God.”

“It would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, if my picture did make you famous!”