Added to these gifts he possessed a third, in
being able to talk without hindering the activities of his brush. They
talked a great deal to each other during those long, delightful
mornings in the sunny corner by the yew-hedge; idle, intimate talk,
that wandered back to the days of the Companions of Finn, and on,
through stirring tales of the _Quartier Latin_ into the future,
and what it was to hold for them. Larry knew what his future must hold
if it was to satisfy him. Since the moment when "Love's sickness" had
laid hold of him (the same as a person would get a stitch leaning over
a churn) he had known it. While he painted her, staring deep and hard,
appraising, carefully, with his outer soul, the curve of her cheek,
the delicate drawing of her small ear, the tender droop of her dark
eyelashes, all the subtle values of light and shade, all the problem
of inherent colour, and the colour that was lent by the sky and the
green things round her, his inner soul was repeating the old saying:
"I love my eyes for looking at you!"
Sometimes he thought he would stand it no longer, he would throw down
his palette and his brushes, and let the portrait go to blazes, and
kneel at her feet, telling her, over and over again, that he loved
her, until she would have to believe him. Yet, for there is something
inhuman about the artist, he refrained.
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