"'Send me away at once,' I went on, 'if I am in any way inconvenient either to you or the young lady. Though indeed when one has hit upon such a discovery, it is but a man's Christian duty to share it with his neighbours.'
"Van Kuylen muttered a Dutch word or two between his teeth; the girl looked gloomy as though I had said something to offend her; the child with the stocking yawned heartily, and dropped a dozen stitches.
"'My good friend,' I at length resumed in Dutch, in which he had taught me to jabber a little, 'tell me honestly whether you wish me at the Devil, or whether I may remain a little longer to stare at this really quite unreasonably exquisite face that your lucky star has led you to--Heaven knows how--and which, to speak plainly, is infinitely too good for you. Such a subject--begging your pardon--is not appropriate for your foot-square canvas, and your finickin genre-brush. Life-size, indeed, and faithfully and humbly copied--as it pleased God to make her--in the manner of the old Venetians, that would be a different thing. But I know you too well, with your worthy visage; you would want to be peeping down upon her from some window-corner or other, or giving scope to some of your antic humour, and that would be an insult to such a paragon of Grecian perfection, with whose face that wretched cotton gown is no more in keeping than a modern crinoline with the Juno Ludovisi.'
"I had no scruple in thus crudely speaking my mind to him; he was rather fond of pungent personal remarks, and did not remain long in my debt.
"He rose to get something that he wanted for his work, and answered without removing his empty pipe from his lips: 'I can well imagine your mouth watering after such an exceptional morsel. You would like, perhaps, to paint her as another pigeon-breasted Diana emerging from a pool under a German oak-tree, and setting horns on the brow of an Acteon who has stolen his legs from the Apollo Belvedere? The girl seems to you good enough for that, does she not? But that's not to be done. You will never get her to consent to any mythological ambiguities. Do you suppose I have ever seen an inch more of her than what she is gracious enough to shew us both at this present moment? And even for this I have had to run after her long, and almost despaired of her ever sitting to me at all. But hunger is the best of go-betweens. And so I have had to give in to all her severe conditions. The door is always to stand open, the little school-girl is always to sit there, and if I ever venture to visit her at her own abode, there is to be an end of us both! Of course I agreed to everything she chose; I was so besotted by her face, I could have committed one of the seven deadly sins just to see her once in this light, sitting on that seat, and so to be able to study her to my heart's content. As to what I am to make of it afterwards that is immaterial. But if I secretly hoped gradually to melt the ice between us--at all events to a kind of brotherly friendship and regard--why, I was much mistaken. It is no great wonder after all. I am not to her taste, and I think none the worse of her for that. But there have been others who accidentally turned in--this is the third sitting--who were thoroughly discomfited, very showy audacious gentry--handsome Fritz, and Schluchtenmüller, and our Don Ramiro, with his languishing tenor voice. They were all tinder at once, but after a little burning and glowing had to retire, extinguished as if by a gush of cold water. Is it not so, Miss,' said he suddenly in German to the silent beauty, 'it is perfectly useless to pay you compliments? This gentleman--who is only a landscape-painter it is true, but still a connoisseur in women--would willingly express his wonder and admiration. But I have told him that you would rather not hear anything of the sort.'
"'You are right,' she replied with the utmost indifference. 'It is the fact, I know, and I cannot alter it. But God knows if I had had anything to do with it, I should never have chosen the face He has given me.'
"Her manner of saying this perfectly amazed me. It had not a touch of that mock modesty, which says the very reverse of what it thinks, in hopes of being contradicted. No, it expressed a weary, but unalterable contempt for the gift of beauty; it was the tone of one who has to drag a sack of gold through a desert, and sighs from the very core of his heart, 'I would give it all for one morsel of bread.'
"Then, too, her way of expressing herself, showed more culture than you usually find amongst girls who hire themselves out to be painted. It was easy to see that the fair creature had some strange story connected with her.
"'Nay, nay,' said I, 'if you had chosen your own face you would not have shown bad taste in the matter. And though, indeed, beauty is transient, while ugliness endures, and there may be inconveniences, or even dangers in the impressions it makes on those who see you, still you would hardly convince me, young lady, that you are seriously annoyed at having such a face. You would be quite unique if it were so.'
"'You may think what you like,' she replied negligently, and her lovely full upper lip assumed a scornful expression. 'I know perfectly well what men are. If a poor thing is vain of her little bit of pink and white, that does not suit them, and if she is not vain at all, but rather curses the beauty which has cost her so dear, why that will not please them either! But after all I have nothing to do with setting other people right, it is enough that I know what I know.'