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He stood before the painter, exuding a mixture of deference and patronage in which either element might predominate as events developed; but Stanwell could see in the incident only the stuff for a good story. "My dear Shepson," he said, "what are you talking about? This is no picture of mine. Why don't you ask me to do you a Corot at once? I hear there's a great demand for them still in the West.
Shepson waited to observe the result of this overwhelming announcement, and Stanwell, after a momentary halt of surprise, brought out laughingly: "But this is a Mungold. Is this what she calls being original?" "Shoost exactly," said Shepson, with unexpected acuteness. "That's vat dey all want something different from what all deir friends have got, but shoost like it all de same.
She began to move away from him slowly, and he followed her in silence along the frozen path. When Stanwell re-entered his studio the dusk had fallen. He lit his lamp and rummaged out some writing-materials. Having found them, he wrote to Shepson to say that he could not paint Mrs. Van Orley, and did not care to accept any more orders for the present.
"Vos that you yelling for the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?" inquired an affable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh, confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive fur coat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used on his hair. "Hullo, Shepson I should say I was yelling. Did you ever feel such an atmosphere?
"My gootness, no I was downstairs looking at Holbrook's sdained class, and I shoost thought I'd sdep up a minute and take a beep at your vork." "Much obliged, I'm sure especially as I assume that you don't want any of it." Try as he would, Stanwell could not keep a note of eagerness from his voice. Mr. Shepson caught the note, and eyed him shrewdly through gold-rimmed glasses.
Speaking of ravens, though, Kate told me she saw old Shepson coming out of your place I say, old man, you're not meditating an apostasy? You're not doing the kind of thing that Shepson would look at?" Stanwell laughed. "Oh, he looked at them but only to confirm his reasons for rejecting them." "Ha! ha! That's right he wanted to refresh his memory with their badness.
Stanwell smiled, but more at himself than Shepson. How could he ever have supposed that the gross fool would see anything in his sketch of Kate Arran?
De most exquisite blush hangings, and a gas-fire, choost as natural " "Oh, hang it, Shepson, do you call that a studio? It's like a manicure's parlour or a beauty-doctor's. By George," broke off Stanwell, "and that's just what he is!" "A peauty-doctor?" "Yes oh, well, you wouldn't see," murmured Stanwell, mentally storing his epigram for more appreciative ears.
That fool has forgotten to light the stove. Come in, but for heaven's sake don't take off your coat." Mr. Shepson glanced about the studio with a look which seemed to say that, where so much else was lacking, the absence of a fire hardly added to the general sense of destitution. "Vell, you ain't as vell fixed as Mr. Mungold ever been to his studio, Mr. Sdanwell?
As his visits always had the same result, Stanwell was reduced to wondering why he had come again; but Shepson was not the man to indulge in vague roamings through the field of art, and it was safe to conclude that his purpose would in due course reveal itself.
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