"Well, I might ask for some hollyhocks."
"Well, I guess not! The hollyhocks can't be picked—they're part of the masterpiece."
"Then you think something yourself," and David lapsed into a discouraged silence.
But I couldn't think of anything save that I must and would have the lady at any cost and though I couldn't see how I was going to get it, I had a very clear picture of myself in the garden, painting away.
"You just wait till we get there," I said to David, as we stumped down the walk together. David was used to my enthusiasms over all sorts of things which he usually only vaguely assented that he could see, and though he never said much when I fell to talking about principles of art, I liked to have him with me always when I worked, because he had such a joyous, fresh little face. I couldn't help but catch the sunshine of it when I did an outdoor sketch; and if I had lived in the days when no picture was complete without a Love in it, David would always have been the one to have posed for me.
Presently we came near the gate and, to speak truly, I was becoming a bit fearful as to just what was going to happen, but David, eager and anticipatory, hopped on ahead of me and peered in.
"Oh!" he called back, "there isn't anything here at all."
"Oh, isn't there?" I said; "you don't mean to say it's gone in."
"If you mean the lady, she isn't here."
And true enough, when I came up there wasn't a soul in sight. How empty the place looked! It was just like a disappointing exhibition—here were all the people come to see the great works, and when the door was reached, there hung a sign which said that the management was sorry, but the best paintings had been delayed on the way, and wouldn't be here till tomorrow at two o'clock! I gazed at my ruined masterpiece—the background was all there, but there was no picture, for what moaning had broad green masses of foliage and shaded distances apart from a contrasting center of interest, of what meaning was there anyhow in a landscape without a human touch?