These are the subjects our time affords." Mallard eyed with fresh curiosity the gentleman who had "fallen back on landscape." "What did you formerly aim at ?" he inquired, with a sort of suave gruffness.
"Things which were hopelessly out of the question.

I worked for a long time at a 'Death of Messalina.' That was in Rome.

I had a splendid inspiration for Messalina's face.

But my hand was paralyzed when I thought of the idiotic comments such a picture would occasion in England.

One fellow would say I had searched through history in a prurient spirit for something sensational; another, that I read a moral lesson of terrible significance; and so on." "A grand subject, decidedly!" exclaimed Elgar, with genuine enthusiasm, which restored Marsh to his own good opinion.