oner painted it than he
scraped it out; which most sitters found discouraging.

Boden, meanwhile, made amends for all that was revolutionary in his
politics or economics, by reaction on two subjects--art and divorce. He
had old-fashioned ideas on the family, and did not want to see divorce
made easy. And he was quaintly Ruskinian in matters of art, believing
that all art should appeal to ethical or poetic emotion.

"Boden admires a painter because he is a good man and pays his washing
bills," drawled Delorme behind his cigarette, from the lazy depths of a
garden chair. "His very colours are virtues, and his pictures must be
masterpieces, because he subscribes to the Dogs' Home, and doesn't beat
his wife."

"Excellently put," said Boden, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes
beginning to shine. "Do men gather grapes off thistles?"

"Constantly. There is no relation whatever between art and morality."
Delorme smoked pugnaciously. "The greater the artist, generally speaking,
the worse the man."

"I say! Really as bad as that?"

Boden waved a languid hand toward the smoke-wreathed phantom of Delorme.
The circle round the two laughed, languidly also, for it was almost too
hot laugh. The circle consisted of Victoria, Gerald Tatham, Mrs. Manisty,
and Colonel Barton, who had reappeared at luncheon, in order to urge
Tatham to see Faversham as soon as possible on certain local affairs.

"Oh! I give you my head in a charger," said Delorme, not without heat.
"For you, Burne-Jones is 'pure' and I am 'decadent'; because he paints
anemic knights in sham armour and I paint what I see."

"The one absolutely fatal course! Don't you agree?"

Boden turned smiling to Mrs. Manisty, of whose lovely head and soft eyes
he was conscious through all the chatter.

The eyes responded.

"What do we see?" she said, with her shy smile. "Surely we only see what
we think--or dream!"

"True!" cried Delorme; "but a painter thinks _in paint_."

"There you go," said Boden, "with your esoteric stuff. All your great
painters have thought and felt with the multitude--painted for the
multitude."

"Never." The painter jerked away his cigar, and sat up. "The multitude is
a brute beast!"

"A just beast," murmured Boden.

"Anything but!" said the painter. "But you know my views. In every
generation, so far as art is concerned, there are about thirty men who
matter--in all the world!"

"Artists?" The voice was Lucy Manisty's.

"Good heave