IV AN UPSET CANOE

The picture progressed steadily. There were no interruptions from the weather, and a paid model would not have been so regular as was Rix. But progress was slow. Roger blamed himself in part for this; he was a slow workman, growing slower always as his work neared completion. “I never saw anybody so painstaking,” said Rix. “And you’re just the opposite in everything else but your painting.” The chief reason, however, for the snail’s pace of this particular work was the model. Rix came early and stayed late; but, after their plain talk and agreement, her strength seemed to fail rapidly. She looked just the same; she had every sign of perfect health; but after ten or fifteen minutes of posing she would insist on a rest—a good, long rest. As he had no right to criticise or control this voluntary model, he could not protest. And, it being essential to the picture that the model keep on till the end, was he not merely doing his simple duty by his picture in trying to amuse and interest her during the long pauses? Not that talking with her[69] was a disagreeable task—no, indeed, or a task at all. But his conscience, as a serious man bent upon a career, needed constant reassurance that he was really not trifling away the gorgeous lights of those long mornings in dawdling with a foolish, frivolous girl who cared only for laughter—that he was not encouraging his liking for her and failing in his duty as an honorable man, as her friend, to discourage her liking for him.

The

[69]

“Don’t be cross with me,” she said one morning when he fell into an obviously depressed reverie during a rest. She had the habit of observing him as a woman observes only the man of whom she believes that he is more worth while as a subject for thought than herself.

“I’m not cross with you,” replied he.

“Then, with yourself.”

“Can’t help it. I work so infernally slow—slower all the time.”

He thought he saw the diaphanous gossamer of a smile flit swiftly across her face. But he could not be sure; it might have been an imagining of his own sensitiveness. “I read somewhere,” observed she, “that genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains.”

“I’m hanged if I know whether I’m taking pains, as I hope, or am just dawdling, as I fear and as you believe. However, we’ll soon be done.”

[70]“You say that as if 

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