and glass. Mrs. Monarch assisted her husband--they washed up my
crockery, they put it away. They wandered off into my little
scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and
that my slender stock of plate had an unprecedented surface. When it
came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess
that my drawing was blurred for a moment--the picture swam. They had
accepted their failure, but they couldn't accept their fate. They
had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse and cruel law
in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than
the unreal; but they didn't want to starve. If my servants were my
models, my models might be my servants. They would reverse the
parts--the others would sit for the ladies and gentlemen, and THEY
would do the work. They would still be in the studio--it was an
intense dumb appeal to me not to turn them out. "Take us on," they
wanted to say--"we'll do ANYTHING."

When all this hung before me the afflatus vanished--my pencil dropped
from my hand. My sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters,
who were also evidently rather mystified and awestruck. Then, alone
with the Major and his wife, I had a most uncomfortable moment, He
put their prayer into a single sentence: "I say, you know--just let
US do for you, can't you?" I couldn't--it was dreadful to see them
emptying my slops; but I pretended I could, to oblige them, for about
a week. Then I gave them a sum of money to go away; and I never saw
them again. I obtained the remaining books, but my friend Hawley
repeats that Major and Mrs. Monarch did me a permanent harm, got me
into a second-rate trick. If it be true I am content to have paid
the price--for the memory.