Chapter 3

It was a drama of small smothered intensely private things, and I knew of
but one other person in the secret; yet that person and I found it
exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an interest the
mutual communication of which did much for our enjoyment, and were present
with emotion at its touching catastrophe. The small case--for so small a
case--had made a great stride even before my little party separated, and in
fact within the next ten minutes.

In that space of time two things had happened one of which was that I made
the acquaintance of Mrs. Brash; and the other that Mrs. Munden reached me,
cleaving the crowd, with one of her usual pieces of news. What she had to
impart was that, on her having just before asked Nina if the conditions of
our sitting had been arranged with me, Nina had replied, with something
like perversity, that she didn't propose to arrange them, that the whole
affair was "off" again and that she preferred not to be further beset for
the present. The question for Mrs. Munden was naturally what had happened
and whether I understood. Oh I understood perfectly, and what I at first
most understood was that even when I had brought in the name of Mrs. Brash
intelligence wasn't yet in Mrs. Munden. She was quite as surprised as Lady
Beldonald had been on hearing of the esteem in which I held Mrs. Brash's
appearance. She was stupefied at learning that I had just in my ardour
proposed to its proprietress to sit to me. Only she came round promptly--
which Lady Beldonald really never did. Mrs. Munden was in fact wonderful;
for when I had given her quickly "Why she's a Holbein, you know,
absolutely," she took it up, after a first fine vacancy, with an immediate
abysmal "Oh IS she?" that, as a piece of social gymnastics, did her the
greatest honour; and she was in fact the first in London to spread the
tidings. For a face--about it was magnificent. But she was also the
first, I must add, to see what would really happen--though this she put
before me only a week or two later. It will kill her, my dear--that's what
it will do

She meant neither more nor less than that it would kill Lady Beldonald if I
were to paint Mrs. Brash; for at this lurid light had we arrived in so
short a space of time. It was for me to decide whether my aesthetic need
of giving life to my idea was such as to justify me in destroying it in a
woman after all in most eyes so beautiful. The situation was indeed
sufficiently queer; for it remained to be seen what I should positively
gain by giving up Mrs. Brash. I appeared to have 'in any case lost Lady
Beldonald, now too "upset"--it was always Mrs. Munden's word about her and,
as I inferred, her own about herself--to meet me again on our previous
footing. The only