“Don’t forget there is a second verse,” said Moira.
“But now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.”
“Yes, but he had to add that to make it a well-rounded thought. The first is the only one that counts. Well-rounded thoughts are an abomination. Or else he had to live up to the well known Housman cynicism. But isn’t this enough for one sitting? I’m hungry.”
“Just five minutes more. There’s something I don’t want to miss about that light. I can’t ever get you into the same position twice. You’re changeable enough—physically!” she concluded.
He strolled over to the portrait when she had released him and criticized it outrageously. The face was all wrong, the colour of the hair absurd, the brow too handsome. It was a good picture perhaps, but a poor portrait. Her sketches of him were better. She had a nice loose line in sketching and didn’t flatter so much. Women ought never to paint men, at least never their sweethearts. They weren’t honest enough. They were too romantic. But this was all delivered in the utmost good nature and she did not resent it. She thought he was quite a good critic of painting. He liked things of very crude strength, directness. Her work, she herself was inclined to admit, indulged in glamour—it was the hardest thing to avoid. But she hoped that in ten or twenty years she would do something good; that was time enough.
As a matter of fact, Miles Harlindew thought his wife’s work remarkably fine and had often said so. Then, discovering she was so modest about it that praise was downright displeasing to her, he adopted the bantering tone. He catered to her modesty by giving her all the severe criticism he dared to. And on the whole it resulted in a better understanding.
Standing in the doorway, he watched her with some impatience, while she put on a hat, powdered her nose, dabbed at her nails and stood in front of the mirror gazing at herself in satisfied animation. She liked to make him wait. Then they slipped down the narrow carpeted stairs and into the brilliant afternoon, breathless and laughing. It was not surprising that people looked twice at the pair. She wondered if there were any two lovers who enjoyed their holidays together as much as they. There were so many things to do and it needed so little to make them memorable. A walk through Italian streets, flooded with little bodies and loud with cries, to some unknown restaurant; or up the Avenue in the dusk to the Park; or a long ride in front of the bus—whatever met their eyes on these jaunts was fresh and new though they had seen it a hundred times before. There was no place for a honeymoon like New York: it meant that the honeymoon never ended.