What they wanted of me was help to make it so.
Fortunately they had no children--I soon divined that.

They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was "for the figure"-- the reproduction of the face would betray them.
I liked them--I felt, quite as their friends must have done--they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit.

But somehow with all their perfections I didn't easily believe in them.
After all they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was--the detestation of the amateur.

Combined with this was another perversity--an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation.

I liked things that appeared; then one was sure.