Neville grunted.
"Oh, oh! such a post-Raphaelite scowl! Job won't bow to you when you go aloft, Kelly. Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring torment…. What are you going to do with me to-day?" she added, glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a full-length virgin canvas.
"Portrait," he replied, tersely.
"Oh," she said, surprised. He had never before painted her clothed.
From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a trifle perplexed, too.
"Louis," she said, "I don't quite see how you're ever going to find a purchaser for just a plain portrait of me."
He said, irritably: "I don't have to work for a living every minute, do I? For Heaven's sake give me a day off to study."
"But—it seems like wasted time—"
"What is wasted time?"
"Why just to paint a portrait of me as I am. Isn't it?" She looked up smilingly, perfectly innocent of any self-consciousness. "In the big canvases for the Byzantine Theatre you always made my features too radiant, too glorious for portraits. It seems rather a slump to paint me as I am—just a girl in street clothes."