'Hawes does his best,' said Forbes, with a touch of obstinacy. 'He looks well, he strides well, he is a fine figure of a man with a big bullying voice; I don't know what more you want in a German prince. It is this everlasting hypercriticism which spoils all one's pleasure and frightens all the character out of the artists!'
At which Mrs. Stuart laughed, and, woman-like, observed that she supposed it was only people who, like Forbes, had succeeded in disarming the critics, who could afford to scoff at them,--a remark which drew a funny little bow, half-petulant, half-pleased, out of the artist, in whom one of the strongest notes of character was his susceptibility to the attentions of women.
'You've seen her already, I believe,' said Wallace to Forbes. 'I think Miss Bretherton told me you were at the _Calliope_ on Monday.'
'Yes, I was. Well, as I tell you, I don't care to be critical. I don't want to whittle away the few pleasures that this dull life can provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what's set before one. Why can't you eat and be thankful? To _look_ at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice too, and her beauty, her freshness, the energy of life in her, give me every sort of artistic pleasure. What a curmudgeon I should be--what a grudging, ungrateful fellow, if, after all she has done to delight me, I should abuse her because she can't speak out her tiresome speeches--which are of no account, and don't matter, to my impression at all,--as well as one of your thin, French, snake-like creatures who have nothing but their _art_, as you call it; nothing but what they have been carefully taught, nothing but what they have laboriously learnt with time and trouble, to depend upon!'
Having delivered himself of this tirade, the artist threw himself back in his chair, tossed back his gray hair from his glowing black eyes, and looked defiance at Kendal, who was sitting opposite.
'But, after all,' said Kendal, roused, 'these tiresome speeches are her _métier_; it's her business to speak them, and to speak them well. You are praising her for qualities which are not properly dramatic at all. In your studio they would be the only thing that a man need consider; on the stage they naturally come second.'