“Nonsense! It does not! Now please show me the portrait. I will not wait any longer.”
“Here you are then!”
He went over to a distant easel, pulled it forward with its back to them, then, when it was near to the sofa, turned it round.
“There he is!”
Miss Van Tuyn sat very still and gazed. After turning the easel Dick Garstin had gone to stand behind the sofa and her. She heard him making a little “t’p! t’p!” with his lips, getting rid, perhaps, of an adherent scrap of tobacco leaf. After what seemed to both of them a very long time she spoke.
“I don’t believe it!” she said. “I don’t believe it!”
“Like the man when he saw a giraffe for the first time? But he was wrong, my girl, for nature does turn out giraffes.”
“No, Dick! It’s too bad!”
Her cheeks were flaming with red.
“Too bad! Don’t you think it’s well painted?”