"It'll give the show away, even if they let us off confetti," he
thought.
He wished he hadn't given in to this High Nuptial Mass business, and a
big wedding, and all the rest of it, but the Doctor and Tishy were
dead keen on it, and he had been sat on.
He and Tishy were going to London, and if this gale lasted, they would
have a devil of a crossing. He wondered if Tishy were a good sailor.
He wasn't, anyhow. He would warn her that he would be no more use to
her than a sick headache, which she would probably have, to start
with, and she wouldn't want another. The Mount Music people were
across the Channel by this time, ahead of the gale too. Luck for them!
Old Mrs. Twomey had told him they were gone, and she said they would
never come back again. Silly old ass, what did she know about it?
He had wandered into his studio; now, without his own volition, almost
as if he were hypnotised, he took the canvas on which he had painted
Christian, from where it was leaning, face inwards, against the wall,
and put it on an easel. He had not looked at it since the day of
conflict, and he told himself that he was now regarding it with the
frigid rye of the art critic.
Yes, it was good. Better than he thought. The technique was jolly
good, slick, and unworried, and the likeness was all right too. He had
somehow just got hold of that ethereal look she always had had.
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