place. I shouldn't like to live in the midst of an unbroken circle of my creations, like Erhart, for instance. And giving them away is an unworthy subterfuge." His successes had been made so far with portraits. Character interested him as much as paint, and, though brother artists agreed that " his colour was sour, and his drawing bad," the sitters were always interested in what he made of them. The portrait was something to talk about, though usually, "It doesn't half do you justice, my dear. Your nose really isn't as large as that, and as for your complexion—well, I suppose yellow and mauve are the latest discoveries, so we must say nothing—still, there is a likeness"
Teresa was sitting in a high-backed Italian chair; she wore a white dress, and a flat, black chip hat, tied under her chin. In her hands she had a bit of red clay, from which she was modelling a tiny statuette of a faun. She did not like posing, and had stipulated, in this picture, for something to do. Basil, accordingly, painted her looking down, musingly, under the shadow of the hat, at the faun. He had roughly sketched in the lower part of the figure, and was still working on the face.
"I shall call it 'The Girl and the Clay,'" he said. "You may be supposed to be 'making a poet out of a man'—though the ordinary thing would be to make a man out of a poet."
