"Come now, my friend--you will help?" said Naumann, in a hopeful tone.

"No; nonsense, Naumann! English ladies are not at everybody's service
as models. And you want to express too much with your painting. You
would only have made a better or worse portrait with a background which
every connoisseur would give a different reason for or against. And
what is a portrait of a woman? Your painting and Plastik are poor
stuff after all. They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising
them. Language is a finer medium."

"Yes, for those who can't paint," said Naumann. "There you have
perfect right. I did not recommend you to paint, my friend."

The amiable artist carried his sting, but Ladislaw did not choose to
appear stung. He went on as if he had not heard.

"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for beings
vague. After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at
you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that especially about
representations of women. As if a woman were a mere colored
superficies! You must wait for movement and tone. There is a
difference in their very breathing: they change from moment to
moment.--This woman whom you have just seen, for example: how would you
paint her voice, pray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you
have seen of her."

"I see, I see. You are jealous. No man must presume to think that he
can paint your ideal. This is serious, my friend! Your great-aunt!
'Der Neffe als Onkel' in a tragic sense--ungeheuer!"

"You and I shall quarrel, Naumann, if you call that lady my aunt again."

"How is she to be called then?"

"Mrs. Casaubon."

"Good. Suppose I get acquainted with her in spite of you, and find
that she very much wishes to be painted?"

"Yes, suppose!" said Will Ladislaw, in a contemptuous undertone,
intended to dismiss the subject. He was conscious of being irritated
by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation. Why
was he making any fuss about Mrs. Casaubon? And yet he felt as if
something had happened to him with regard to her. There are characters
which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in
dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their
susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently
quiet.

CHAPTER XX.

"A child forsaken, waking suddenly,
Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rove,
And seeth only that it