He had filled the part so often, at the appeal of one good friend and another, that he had sworn never again to be caught, cajoled, or hired. He could have hated the Ghiberti doors had such a thing not been impossible. He did rather hate the Santissima Annunziata. And now it was all to do over again.
It might be adduced, as a mitigation of his misfortune, that this was different.
This was sometimes very different.
A singular thing about acquaintance with Mrs. Hawthorne was that it had in a sense no beginning. One started fairly in the middle. No sooner did one meet her than one seemed to have known her long and know her well. Most people found this so. One therefore readily slid into speaking one’s mind to Mrs. Hawthorne, dispensing with the formal affectation of a perfect respect for her every act and opinion, secure in the recognition that anger, sulkiness, the self-love that easily takes umbrage, were as far from her breezy sturdiness as the scrupulosities of an anxious refinement.
That one could say what one pleased to Mrs. Hawthorne put more life into intercourse with her, naturally, than there 101would have been if, with her limitations, one had been forced to be entirely and tamely circumspect.
“Mrs. Hawthorne,” cried Gerald, “do me the very real favor, will you, like a dear good woman, of not calling the most venerable of the primitives Simma Bewey!”
It was astonishing what things Gerald Fane could say without losing his effect of a complete, even considerate politeness.
“But that’s the way it’s written,” said Mrs. Hawthorne.
“You will pardon the liberty I take of contradicting you; it is not. It gives me goose-flesh. Cimabue!”
“Very well. I’ll try to remember. But it doesn’t matter what I call him; his Madonna is no beauty. Do you mean to tell me there was a time when people admired faces like that? She gives me a pain.”