Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree.
The elder had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes.
What was he thinking of?
The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.
But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale.
To Mihailov at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money matters.
"It is put up there to be sold," he answered, scowling gloomily.
When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors.
And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him.
He began to look at his picture with all his own full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture--a conviction essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other interests--in which alone he could work.
Christ's foreshortened leg was not right, though.
He took his palette and began to work.
As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection.
When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for it.
He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected and saw everything too much.
There was only one stage in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible.
Today he was too much agitated.
He would have covered the picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John.
At last, as it were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home.
Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly lively and cheerful.
They talked of Mihailov and his pictures.
The word _talent_, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it.
They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for want of education--the common defect of our Russian artists.
But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories, and they were continually coming back to it.
"What an exquisite thing!
How he has succeeded in it, and how simply!
He doesn't even comprehend how good it is.
Yes, I mustn't let it slip; I must buy it," said Vronsky.
Chapter 13
Mihailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of Anna.
On the day fixed he came and began the work.
From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty.
It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her characteristic beauty.
"One needs to know and love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul," Vronsky thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest expression of her soul.
But the expression was so true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.
"I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything," he said of his own portrait of her, "and he just looked and painted it.
That's where technique comes in."
"That will come," was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what was most important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art.
Golenishtchev's faith in Vronsky's talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky's sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual.
In another man's house, and especially in Vronsky's palazzo, Mihailov was quite a different man from what he was in his studio.
He behaved with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect.
He called Vronsky "your excellency," and notwithstanding Anna's and Vronsky's invitations, he would never stay to dinner, nor come except for the sittings.
Anna was even more friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait.
Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to know the artist's opinion of his picture.
Golenishtchev never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into Mihailov.
But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them.
Anna was aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided conversation with her.
Vronsky's talk about his painting he met with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky's picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev's conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him.
Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were, hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up coming.
Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous of Vronsky.