"Well, I went off to the house in my most egregious mood--rather
moved, Lord forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of
failure being crowned by the glory of my painting him! Of course I
meant to do the picture for nothing--I told Mrs. Stroud so when she
began to stammer something about her poverty. I remember getting off
a prodigious phrase about the honour being _mine_--oh, I was
princely, my dear Rickham! I was posing to myself like one of my own
sitters.
"Then I was taken up and left alone with him. I had sent all my
traps in advance, and I had only to set up the easel and get to
work. He had been dead only twenty-four hours, and he died suddenly,
of heart disease, so that there had been no preliminary work of
destruction--his face was clear and untouched. I had met him once or
twice, years before, and thought him insignificant and dingy. Now I
saw that he was superb.
"I was glad at first, with a merely aesthetic satisfaction: glad to
have my hand on such a 'subject.' Then his strange life-likeness
began to affect me queerly--as I blocked the head in I felt as if he
were watching me do it.
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