I wish you would let me see what you get."
But Bebee had gone away--unheeding--dreaming of Juliet and of Jeanne
d'Arc, of whom he had told her tales.
He made sketches of her sometimes, but seldom pleased himself.
It was not so easy as he had imagined that it would prove to portray this
little flower-like face, with the clear eyes and the child's open brow.
He who had painted Phryne so long and faithfully had got a taint on his
brush--he could not paint this pure, bright, rosy dawn--he who had always
painted the glare of midnight gas on rouge or rags. Yet he felt that if
he could transfer to canvas the light that was on Bebee's face he would
get what Scheffer had missed. For a time it eluded him. You shall paint a
gold and glistening brocade, or a fan of peacock's feathers, to
perfection, and yet, perhaps, the dewy whiteness of the humble little
field daisy shall baffle and escape you.
He felt, too, that he must catch her expression flying as he would do the
flash of a swallow's wing across a blue sky; he knew that Bebee, forced
to studied attitudes in an atelier, would be no longer the ideal that he
wanted.
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