The Incomplete Amorist

"Are you sure that you posted the letter?"

"Altogether, monsieur," said the concierge, fingering the key of the drawer that held it.

And the hot ferment of Paris life seethed and fretted all around him. If Betty were at Long Barton--oh, the dewy gray grass in the warren--and the long shadows on the grass!

Three days more went by.

"You have posted the letter?"

"But yes, Monsieur. Be tranquil. Without doubt it was a letter that should exact time for the response."

It was on the fifth day that he met Mimi Chantal, the prettiest model on the left bank.

"Is monsieur by chance painting the great picture which shall put him between Velasquez and Caran d'Ache on the last day?"

"I am painting nothing," said Vernon. "And why is the prettiest model in Paris not at work?"

"I was in lateness but a little quarter of an hour, Monsieur. And behold me--chucked."

"It wasn't for the first time, then?"

"A nothing one or two days last week. Monsieur had better begin to paint that chef d'oeuvre--to-day even. It isn't often that the prettiest model in Paris is free to sit at a moment's notice."

"But," said Vernon, "I haven't an idea for a picture even. It is too hot for ideas. I'm going into the country at the end of the month, to do landscape."

"To paint a picture it is then absolutely necessary to have an idea?"

"An idea--or a commission."

"There is always something that lacks! With me it is the technique that is to seek; with you the ideas! Otherwise we should both be masters. For you have technique both hands full; I have ideas, me."

"Tell me some of them," said Vernon, strolling along by her side. It was not his habit to stroll along beside models. But to-day he was fretted and chafed by long waiting for that answer to his letter. Anything seemed better than the empty studio where one waited.

"Here is one! I have the idea that artists have no eyes. How they pose me ever as l'Été or La Source or Leda, or that clumsy Suzanne with her eternal old men. As if they knew better than I do how a woman holds herself up or sits herself down, or nurses a duck, or defends herself!"

"Your idea is probably correct. I understand you to propose that I should paint a picture called The Blind Artist?"