"Have you got it here?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I say, do let me see it."
Celia hesitated.
"I think we had better wait till you are a little stronger," she said
very gently.
"Is it so very beautiful?"
"Well--"
"So beautiful that it almost hurts? Celia, dear, let me risk it," I
pleaded.
She fetched it and gave it to me. I gazed at it a long time.
"Who is it?" I asked at last.
"I don't know, dear."
"Is it like anybody we know?"
"I think it's meant to be like _you_, darling," said Celia tenderly,
trying to break it to me.
I gazed at it again.
"Would you get me a glass?" I asked her.
"A looking-glass, or with brandy and things in it?"
"Both ... Thank you. Promise me I don't look like this."
"You don't," she said soothingly.
"Then why didn't you tell the artist so and ask him to rub it out and
do it again?"
Celia sighed.
"He has. The last was his third rubbige."
Then another thing struck me.
"I thought you weren't going to have it in uniform?"
"I didn't at first. But we've been trying it in different costumes
since to--to ease the face a little. It looked awful in mufti. Like
a--a--"
"Go on," I said, nerving myself to it.
"Like an uneasy choir-boy. I think I shall send it back again and ask
him to put it in a surplice."
"Yes, but why should my wife dangle a beneficed member of the
Established Church of England round her neck? What proud prelate--"
"Choir-boy, darling. You're thinking of bishops.
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