To Victoria's
thinking, indeed, he "pontified" at all times, a great deal more than was
necessary.
However she sat resigned. She did not like Delorme, and her preference
was all for another school of art. She had moreover a critical respect
for her own features, and she did not want at all to see them rendered by
what seemed to her the splashing violence of Delorme's brushwork. But
Harry had asked it of her, and here she was.
Her thoughts, moreover, were full of Harry's affairs, so that the
conversation between her and the painter was more or less pretence on her
part.
Delorme, meanwhile, was divided between the passion of a new subject and
the wrath excited in him by a newspaper article which had reached him at
breakfast.
"A little more to the left, please, Lady Tatham. Admirable! One moment!"
The scrabble of charcoal on paper.
Delorme stepped back. Victoria sat languidly passive.
"Did you read that article on me in _The Weekly_? The man's a
fool!--knows nothing, and writes like God Almighty. A little more full
face. That's it! I suppose all professions are full of these jealous
beasts. Ours is cluttered up with them--men who never sell a picture,
and make up by living on the compliments of their own little snarling
set. But, upon my word, it makes one rather sick. Ah, that's good! You
moved a trifle--that's better--just a moment!"
"I'm glad you let me sit," said Victoria absently. "I _stood_ to Whistler
once. It nearly killed me.
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