“Lady Strange!” he murmured reproachfully, with ludicrous woe.
“Ah, well, then, I will sit for you—where—here?”
“Oh, not here! Did you think I would have the cheek to ask you to climb these steps to sit for me? Anywhere you arrange for me to come.”
“Then come to our hotel, but I know my husband intends to ask you to dine with us to-day so we can then settle the time.”
“Thank you more than awfully!” he cried with most unaffected fervour, “it’s such a boon for a fellow like me to get a lady; we can get more or less colour and lovely flesh, you know, to paint from in the cheap models, but then they are grisette to the very marrow. Besides, it is not safe with Legrun even to experiment on them. We must learn to draw before we go about libelling even models, he says, ‘Poor devils, they have enough to put up without that!’ So you can see what an inestimable benefit you are bestowing on me. Strange, do you notice my walls? Not a rag to break the monotony.”
“I do; I thought the sternness of Art had come on you prematurely.”
“No, but Legrun did. I brought all the old rags from the old shop and renewed the stock here, and those four walls were one delicate glimmer of colour, when, as Satan himself arranged it, who should come shambling and blaspheming up the stairs one blessed Sabbath day but Legrun, who insists upon having our addresses. I thought he’d have a fit when he sat down gasping and glaring at the walls. ‘My good lad,’ he roared at last, ‘how old are you?’ ‘Nineteen,’ says I, shaking like a jelly fish. ‘I thought you were nine,’ he yelled, ‘and making a doll’s house; clean down that filth, clean it from the decent lime-washed walls that never injured you, and remember—remember, boy, that Art is serious, severe, stern, grave, terrible,’ he shrieked, waving his arms like a maniac, and spitting horribly, ‘it will stand no tricks, no mockings, parbleu! Rags!—Filth!—with the disease shock full in them! Gur! Guz! Hu! Never no more let me see such sights!’ and he raged down the stairs into the street, spitting, and scraping his throat,—he lives in an awful funk of infection,—and so I had to strip off my rags and leave the walls to their native nakedness.”
“You can have your revenge when you set up on your own account. Gwen, it is nearly six o’clock.”
“Yes, we must go. We’ll see you at dinner, Mr. Brydon?”
“Will you walk or drive, Gwen?”