"No—I don't believe he's very sorry. He wasn't interested in it. He'll never be a success as a portrait-painter, will he?"
Teresa smiled. "Not a worldly success, I fancy. But I don't believe he much wants to be."
"Oh, I daresay not. Only great painters were, weren't they? They all wanted to please a duke, or a king, or somebody. Of course, when a painter gets a big name, like Sargent or Whistler, he can have as many moods and whims as he likes; it only makes people run after him the more. I've heard so many stories about that Swedish man that painted everybody last year. He did about two portraits a week, and he said when he got back to Sweden that if he could have painted with his left hand he might have done two at once. He started pictures of all the De Morgan girls, and made love to one of them, and Papa de Morgan kicked him out of the house; but he insisted on being paid for all the pictures just the same, under threat of a law-suit, and got the money. And they got him to paint the King of Sweden, and he painted him looking half asleep and quite idiotic, not at all regal. Then one of the princesses sat to him, and he came quite drunk and slapped off the portrait in no time. That's what it is to be the fashion!"
Mrs. Perry laughed nervously. Her voice had
