My sitters are always telling me things which I do not want to know,
just because I am so beastly outspoken and sympathetic."
"You must have an excellent chance to get pointers," responded the
sitter, his pale eyes kindling with animation. "You've painted two or
three men this winter that could have put you up to a good thing."
"That isn't the sort of line chat takes in a studio," Fenton returned,
with a slight shrug. "It isn't business that men talk in a studio. That
would be too incongruous."
Irons sneered and laughed, with an air of consequence and superiority.
"I don't suppose many of you artist fellows would make much of a fist
at business," he observed.
"Modern business," laughed the other, amused by his own epigram, "is
chiefly the art of transposing one's debts. The thing to learn is how
to pass the burden of your obligations from one man's shoulders to
those of another often enough so that nobody who has them gets tired
out, and drops them with a crash."
His sitter grinned appreciatively.
"And they don't tell you how to do this?"
"Oh, no. The things my sitters tell me about are of a very different
sort. They make to me confidences they want to get rid of; things you'd
rather not hear. Heavens! I have all I can do to keep some men from
treating me like a priest and confessing all their sins to me."
Mr.
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