No doubt about it,' I said. 'I know the Nawab well, the young
scoundrel. How dignified he looks!'

There was a note of real sorrow in Kauffer's voice. 'Dignified?
Oh, yes; dignified, but, you observe, also black. The Nawab will
not be painted black. At once it is on my hands.'

'But he is black,' I remonstrated. 'He's the darkest native I've
ever seen among the nobility.'

'No matter for that. He will not be black. When I photograph that
Nawab--any nawab--I do not him black make. But ziss ass of Armour--
ach!'

It was a fascinating subject, and I could have pursued it all along
the line of poor Armour's rejected canvases, but the need to get
away from Kauffer with his equal claim upon my sympathy was too
great. To have cracked my solemn mask by a single smile would have
been to break down irrepressibly, and never since I set foot in
India had I felt a parallel desire to laugh and to weep. There was
a pang in it which I recognize as impossible to convey, arising from
the point of contact, almost unimaginable yet so clear before me, of
the uncompromising ideals of the atelier and the naive demands of
the Oriental, with an unhappy photographer caught between and
wriggling. The situation was really monstrous, the fatuous
rejection of all that fine scheming and exquisite manipulation, and
it did not grow less so as Mr. Kauffer continued to unfold it.
Armour had not, apparently, proceeded to the scene of his labours
without instructions. In the pig-sticking delineation he had been