THE PICTURE BY THE ARTIST-MAN
CHAPTER VII
THE PICTURE BY THE ARTIST-MAN
THE ladies persisted, though the artist was obdurate. He stood in their path directly before the covered picture on the foreign easel. His eyes wandered gravely over the various faces of his fair besiegers.
Said the Duchess Aoi, with her small chin raised and her long eyes at disdainful level:—
“Sir Artist, you invest a picture with the attributes of the original. Yet even the princess’s most celestial person is not so sacred to our insignificant eyes. Why, then, her august picture?”
Junzo bowed only slightly to his interlocutor, and replied briefly:—
“The portrait is unfinished, Duchess Aoi.”
“Unfinished! Well, and did we not gaze upon the statue of his Imperial Highness while yet it was unfinished?”