onslaught.

"I don't admit a conscious moral aim in art," I said. "Art need only
concern itself with being beautiful and interesting; the rest will
follow. But a badly-painted picture certainly makes me feel wicked, and
when I go to the National Gallery to have a look at the Velasquezes and
Veroneses I feel the better for it."

"Velasquez?" Miss Jones repeated. "Ah, well, I prefer the old masters--I
mean those who painted religious subjects as no one since has painted
them. Why did not Velasquez, at least, as he could not rise to the
ideal, paint beautiful people? I never have been able to care for mere
ugliness, however cleverly copied."

I felt buffeted by her complacent crudity.

"Velasquez had no soul," she added.

"No soul! Why he paints life, character, soul, everything! Copied! What
of his splendid decorativeness, his colour, his atmosphere?" My
ejaculations left her calm unruffled.

"Ah, but all that doesn't make the world any better," she returned,
really with an air of humouring a silly materialism; and as she went
back to her pose she added, very kindly, for my face probably revealed
my injured feelings:

"You see I have rather serious views of life."

"Miss Jones--really!" I laid down my palette. "I must beg of you to
believe that I have, too--very serious."

Gently Miss Jones shook her head, looking, not at me, but down into the
mirror. This effect of duty fulfilled, even in opposition, was most
characteristic.

"I cannot believe it," she said, "else why, when you have facility,
talent, and might employ them on a higher subject, do you paint a mere
study of a vain young lady?"

This interpretation of Manon startled me, so lacking was it in
comprehension.

"Manon Lescaut was more than a vain young lady, Miss Jones."

"Well," Miss Jones lifted her eyes for a moment to smile quietly,
soothingly at me. "I am not imputing any wrong to Miss Manon Lescaut; I
merely say that she is vain. A harmless vanity no doubt, but I have
posed for other characters, you see!" Her smile was so charming in its
very fatuity that the vision of her lovely face, vulgarized and
unrecognizable in "Faith Conquers Fear," filled me with redoubled
exasperation. Her misinterpretation of Manon stirred a certain deepening
of that touch of discomfort--a sickly unpleasantness. I found myself
flushing.

Miss Jones's white hand--the hand that held the mirror with such beauty
in taper finger-tips and turn of wrist--fell to her