You'll Continually Be Needing To Refer To Me For
Data, Don't You Know, On Which To Base Your Conclusions.
How can
you tell whether you're in love with me or not if- (No, I am not
shouting at all; it's your guilty conscience; I'm whispering.) How
can you tell whether you're in love with me, I repeat, unless you
keep me under constant examination?"
"That seems sensible, though I dare say it is full of sophistry; but
I have made up my mind to go into the country and paint while
Salemina and Francesca are on the Continent. One cannot think in
this whirl. A winter season in Washington followed by a summer
season in London, - one wants a breath of fresh air before beginning
another winter season somewhere else. Be a little patient, please.
I long for the calm that steals over me when I am absorbed in my
brushes and my oils."
"Work is all very well," said Mr. Beresford with determination, "but
I know your habits. You have a little way of taking your brush, and
with one savage sweep painting out a figure from your canvas. Now
if I am on the canvas of your heart, - I say 'if' tentatively and
modestly, as becomes me, - I've no intention of allowing you to paint
me out; therefore I wish to remain in the foreground, where I can
say 'Strike, but hear me,' if I discover any hostile tendencies in
your eye. But I am thankful for small favours (the 'no' you do not
quite dare say, for instance), and I'll talk it over with you to-
morrow, if the British gentry will give me an opportunity, and if
you'll deign to give me a moment alone in any other place than the
Royal Academy."
"I was alone with you to-day for a whole hour at least."
"Yes, first at the London and Westminster Bank, second in Trafalgar
Square, and third on the top of a 'bus, none of them congenial spots
to a man in my humour.
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