'What the devil does it matter what the girl said? All we care about is the picture.'
'I remember her very words. You who have bought the picture can see the girl; but I, who painted it, can hear her voice.'
'You are not going off into heroics again?'
'No, no. Don't be afraid. I am not going to tell you what she said. Only I told her, being pleased with what she told me, that she was a prophetess. Nobody ought ever to prophesy good things about a man, for they never come to pass. Let them prophesy disappointment and ruin and shame, and then they always come true. My God! what a prophecy was hers! And what has come of it? I have sold my genius, which is my soul. I have traded it away. It is the sin unforgiven in this world and in the next.'
'When you give over tragedy and blank verse——'
'Oh! I have done.'
'I should like to ask you a question.'
'Ask it.'
'The foreground—the sea-weeds lying over the boulders. Does the light fall quite naturally? I hardly understand—look here. If the sunlight——'
'You to pretend to be a painter!' Roland snorted impatiently. 'You to talk about lights and shadows! Man alive! I wonder you haven't been found out ages ago! The light falls this way—this way—see!'—he turned the painting about to show how it fell.