"What nonsense! I like for you to be modest, of
course--that will be one of your greatest charms. But if you are worried
about the quality of your work--forget it, my dear boy. Once I have made
you the rage, no one will stop to think whether your pictures are good or
bad. The art is not in what you do, but in how you get it before the
world. Ask Conrad Lagrange if I am not right."
"As to that," returned the artist, "Mr. Lagrange agrees with you,
perfectly."
"But what is this that you are doing now? Will it be ready for the
exhibition too?" She looked past him, at the big canvas; and he, watching
her curiously stepped aside.
Parts of the picture were little more than sketched in, but still, line
and color spoke with accusing truth the spirit of the company that had
gathered at the banquet in the home on Fairlands Heights, the night of Mr.
Taine's death. The figures were not portraits, it is true, but they
expressed with striking fidelity, the lives and characters of those who
had, that night, been assembled by Mrs. Taine to meet the artist. The
figure in the picture, standing with uplifted glass and drunken pose at
the head of the table--with bestial, lust-worn face, disease-shrunken
limbs, and dying, licentious eyes fixed upon the beautiful girl
musician--might easily have been Mr.
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