Страница 14

The letter addressed to me, which your delicacy would not permit you to read, was for your perusal & sent for that purpose. I wanted you to read it.

Your suggestion concerning G.K.'s next trial in art — is clever, but not sufficiently, as to conceal the white threads of the Jesuitically black insinuation. G.K. was however caught at it. "Nous verrons, nous verrons!" says the French song.

G. Khool says — presenting his most humble salaams — that you have "incorrectly described the course of events as regards the first portrait." What he says is this: (1) "the day she came" she did not ask you "to give her a piece of" etc. (page 300) but after you had begun speaking to her of my portrait, which she doubted much whether you could have. It is but after half-an-hour's talk over it in the front drawing room — you two forming the two upper points of the triangle, near your office door, and your lady the lower one (he was there he says) that she told you she would try. It was then that she asked you for "a piece of thick white paper" and that you gave her a piece of a thin letter paper, which had been touched by some very anti-magnetic person. However he did, he says, the best he could. On the day following, as Mrs. S. had looked at it just twenty seven minutes before he did it, he accomplished his task. It was not "an hour or two before" as you say for he had told the "O.L." to let her see it just before breakfast. After breakfast, she asked you for a piece of Bristol board, and you gave her two pieces, both marked and not one as you say. The first time she brought it out