“I beg your pardon,” I said. “We came over from the other side, and did not see you before. I hope we have not disturbed you much.”
“Not in the least,” he answered courteously, and rose as he spoke.
I saw that the subject on his easel suggested that of which Wynnie had been making a sketch at the same time, on the day when Connie first lay on the top of the opposite cliff. But he was not even looking in the same direction now.
“Do you mind having your work seen before it is finished?”
“Not in the least, if the spectators will do me the favour to remember that most processes have to go through a seemingly chaotic stage,” he answered.
I was struck with the mode and tone of the remark.
“Here is no common man,” I said to myself, and responded to him in something of a similar style.
“I wish we could always keep that in mind with regard to human beings themselves, as well as their works,” I said aloud.
The painter looked at me, and I looked at him.
“We speak each from the experience of his own profession, I presume,” he said.