"To-morrow, if you like, but I want you to see the Academy first. I should like you to come to it prejudiced, with your eyes full of all the successful pictures of the year."
"Is it not at the Academy, Lucia?"
"Don't look so apprehensive!" she said, with a slight laugh. "It has not been rejected—simply, I could not get it finished in time for presentation. I was ill, and it just missed this season by a very little."
"And now, what are you going to do with it?"
"I must offer it next year, that's all."
"What a disappointment for you!"
"Yes, I should have thought so some time ago; but I seem to be much more apathetic now to everything. Each year that one lives one gets to expect less and less from life, and one grows more philosophic, more contented with what is thrown in one's way, and less disappointed when one's hopes and expectations are not realised. Judging by those things which we do gain and enjoy and experience the worth lessness of, I suppose we learn by degrees to infer that others so longed-for and coveted would prove as valueless if possessed."
Her voice was low and tired, and had the sound of suppressed tears in it.
"You are in a depressed frame of mind," I said.
"Yes;" then, with a cynical smile, "hysteric, as I told you. Well, will you come to-morrow about eleven, and then afterwards we can come back here to criticise 'Hyacinthus'?"