At the end of half an hour he said she was a very good sitter and this pleased her, and she tried to keep the pose till the clock struck, but at the end of fifty minutes she said: “I must get up,” and she came round to see what he was doing.
“Now you mustn’t criticise it,” he said. “It’s only a beginning. You’ve forgiven me my remarks about the bar?”
“Don’t remind me of it again.”
But he could not get it out of his head that he had annoyed her, and was unable to apply himself to his painting; perhaps for this reason his drawing went wrong, and his colour became muddy, and the thought struck him that if Maggie were to find this portrait about the studio she would certainly ask him whose portrait it was.
“I can’t paint to-day,” he said, getting up from his easel.
“And why can’t you pain
