’I don’t mean rouged, or enamelled, or got up by Madame Rachel; but have you ever had your portrait taken?’

‘I have been photographed of course.’

’That’s why I asked you if you had been painted—­so as to make some little distinction between the two.  I am a painter by profession, and do portraits.’

‘So Mrs Broughton told me.’

‘I am not asking for a job, you know.’

‘I am quite sure of that.’

’But I should have thought you would have been sure to have sat to somebody.’

’I never did.  I never thought of doing so.  One does those things at the instigation of one’s intimate friends—­fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts and the like.’

‘Or husbands, perhaps—­or lovers?’

’Well, yes; my intimate friend is my mother, and she would never dream of such a thing.  She hates pictures.’

‘Hates pictures!’

’And especially portraits.  And I’m afraid, Mr Dalrymple, she hates artists.’

’Good heavens; how cruel!  I suppose there is some story attached to it.  There has been some fatal likeness—­some terrible picture—­something in her early days.’

’Nothing of the kind, Mr Dalrymple.  It is merely the fact that her sympathies are with ugly things, rather than with pretty things.  I think she loves the mahogany dinner-table better than anything else in the house; and she likes to have everything dark, and plain, and solid.’

‘And good?’

‘Good of its kind, certainly.’

‘If everyone was like your mother, how would the artist live?’

‘There would be none.’

‘And the world, you think, would be none the poorer?’

’I did not speak for myself.  I think the world would be very much the poorer.  I am very fond of ancient masters, though I do not suppose that I understand them.’

’They are easier understood than the modern, I can tell you.  Perhaps you don’t care for modern pictures?’

’Not in comparison, certainly.  If that is uncivil, you have brought it on yourself.  But I do not in truth mean anything derogatory to the painters of the day.  When their pictures are old, they—­that is the good ones among them—­will be nice also.’

‘Pictures are like wine, and want age, you think?’

’Yes, and statues too, and buildings above all things.  The colours of new paintings are so glaring, and the faces are so bright and self-conscious, that they look to me when I go to the exhibition like coloured prints in a child’s new picture-book.  It is the same thing with buildings.  One sees all the points, and nothing is left to the imagination.’

‘I find I have come across a real critic.’

‘I hope so, at any rate, I am not a sham one’ and Miss Van Siever as she said this looked very savage.

‘I shouldn’t take you to be sham in anything.’

’Ah, that would be saying a great deal for myself.  Who can undertake to say that he is not a sham in anything?’