“Did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?”
“Not there and then. She murmured something about being ‘so clever.’ Fancy coming to the Academy to be clever!”
“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.”
“Which reminds me that I can’t remember whether I accepted an invitation from you to dine at Kettner’s to-night.”
“On the other hand, I can remember with startling distinctness not having asked you to.”
“So much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so we’ll consider that settled. What were you talking about? Oh, pictures. Personally, I rather like them; they are so refreshingly real and probable, they take one away from the unrealities of life.”
“One likes to escape from oneself occasionally.”
“That is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one’s bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself. I hate posterity—it’s so fond of having the last word. Of course, as regards portraits, there are exceptions.”
“For instance?”
“To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to heaven prematurely.”