As soon as I saw her I said to myself, 'By Jove, there 's my statue in the flesh!'" "What is your subject ?" asked Roderick.
"Don't take it ill," said Gloriani.

"You know I 'm the very deuce for observation.

She would make a magnificent Herodias!" If Roderick had taken it ill (which was unlikely, for we know he thought Gloriani an ass, and expected little of his wisdom), he might have been soothed by the candid incense of Sam Singleton, who came and sat for an hour in a sort of mental prostration before both bust and artist.
But Roderick's attitude before his patient little devotee was one of undisguised though friendly amusement; and, indeed, judged from a strictly plastic point of view, the poor fellow's diminutive stature, his enormous mouth, his pimples and his yellow hair were sufficiently ridiculous.

"Nay, don't envy our friend," Rowland said to Singleton afterwards, on his expressing, with a little groan of depreciation of his own paltry performances, his sense of the brilliancy of Roderick's talent.

"You sail nearer the shore, but you sail in smoother waters.