Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/219

 and yet she keeps urging me and nagging at me to make the change.

"Why cannot I paint portraits? For a simple reason. I can draw trees and rocks and even cows and sheep and horses, but I cannot draw people. I never could. It is left out of me. The moment I try to draw a face I become confused. My art is baffled. I must try to draw it as it is, when my whole training has been to make 'arrangements.' If I could put both the eyebrows up in one corner of the face and add as many noses as seemed necessary to make an agreeable composition, it would be different. But the rules of portraiture will not permit . . ." Here he would shrug his shoulders in a comic mockery of despair.

Then it would be Madame's turn to confide in Edward; but she made no bones about doing this in her husband's presence.

"He neglects me," she would say. "He thinks only of himself and his work. All I ask for is the little loving attentions that every woman asks for and that I do not get . . . He doesn't make love to me any more . . ."

Here Beaulieu would interrupt, "But I do—all the time—with every thought I think—with every gesture I make."

And Madame would deny the truth of this, and presently there would be as plain-spoken a quarrel