The women in your set are
artists. There's all the difference in a Sargent and a man with half
a dozen coloured chalks on the pavement, between them and the women
you'll find in Piccadilly at night. But they're both workers in the
same dignified profession. When you think of the way those poor
wretches shove on their rouge--a little silk bag turned inside out
with eider-down on it and rouge powder on that, then the whole thing
jammed on to the face before a mirror in one of Swan & Edgar's shop
windows; any night you can see 'em doing it--and then look at a
society woman done up, with a maid in attendance and a mirror lighted
up, as if it were an actor's dressing-table--my heavens, you're
liable to make a comparison then."
Dolly shuddered at the picture. "I think you've got a loathsome mind,
Jack," she said with conviction.
"Of course you do, and you're quite right. It is a loathsome idea
to think that a man of the type of Sargent is of the same noble
profession as the pavement artist. You can only disinfect its
loathsomeness in a degree by assuring people that they don't work
in the same street. But it always is loathsome in this country to
see facts as they really are, and when you know of society women who
send nude portraits of themselves--"
"Jack!"
"--Up to wealthy men whom they have not had the pleasure of meeting,
it's naturally a beastly conception of life to compare them with
those unfortunate women whose existence of course we all know about,
but would much rather not discuss.
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