"I scarcely know what to say to you," he logically pleaded, "for certainly it's your fault if you get on so fast."
"I'm too clever—I'm a humbug."
"That's the way I used to be," said Nick.
She rested her brave eyes on him, then turned them over the room slowly; after which she attached them again, kindly, musingly—rather as if he had been a fine view or an interesting object—to his face. "Ah, the pride of that—the sense of purification! He 'used' to be forsooth! Poor me! Of course you'll say, 'Look at the sort of thing I've undertaken to produce compared with the rot you have.' So it's all right. Become great in the proper way and don't expose me." She glanced back once more at the studio as if to leave it for ever, and gave another last look at the unfinished canvas on the easel. She shook her head sadly, "Poor Mr. Sherringham—with that!" she wailed.
"Oh I'll finish it—it will be very decent," Nick said.
"Finish it by yourself?"
"Not necessarily. You'll come back and sit when you return to London."
"Never, never, never again."
He wondered. "Why you've made me the most profuse offers and promises."
"Yes, but they were made in ignorance and I've backed out of them. I'm capricious too—faites la part de ça. I see it wouldn't do—I didn't know it then. We're too far apart—I am, as you say, a Philistine." And as he protested with vehemence against this unscrupulous bad faith she added: "You'll find other models. Paint Gabriel Nash."