"Yes, but they were made in ignorance and I've backed out of them. I'm
capricious too--_faites la part de ca_. I see it wouldn't do--I didn't
know it then. We're too far apart--I _am_, as you say, a Philistine."
And as he protested with vehemence against this unscrupulous bad faith
she added: "You'll find other models. Paint Gabriel Nash."
"Gabriel Nash--as a substitute for you?"
"It will be a good way to get rid of him. Paint Mrs. Dallow too," Miriam
went on as she passed out of the door he had opened for her--"paint Mrs.
Dallow if you wish to eradicate the last possibility of a throb."
It was strange that, since only a moment before he had been in a state
of mind to which the superfluity of this reference would have been the
clearest thing about it, he should now have been moved to receive it
quickly, naturally, irreflectively, receive it with the question: "The
last possibility? Do you mean in her or in me?"
"Oh in you. I don't know anything about 'her.'"
"But that wouldn't be the effect," he argued with the same supervening
candour. "I believe that if she were to sit to me the usual law would be
reversed."
"The usual law?"
"Which you cited a while since and of which I recognised the general
truth. In the case you speak of," he said, "I should probably make a
shocking picture."
"And fall in love with her again? Then for God's sake risk the daub!"
Miriam laughed out as she floated away to her victoria.