Upon every social occasion which brought young ladies of beauty and middle-aged gentlemen of impressive eminence into conversational contact he saw the thing in imagination done again.

In the end it suggested itself to him as paintable--the astonished drawing-room, the graceful half-kneeling girl with the bent head, the other dismayed and uncomprehending figure yielding a doubtful hand, his discomfort indicated in the very lines of his waistcoat.
"_A Fin de Siecle Tribute_," Kendal named it.

He dismissed the idea as absurd, and then reconsidered it as a means of disposing of the incident finally.

He knew it could be very effectually put away in canvas.

He assured himself again that he could not entertain the idea of painting it seriously, and that this was because of the inevitable tendency which the subject would have toward caricature.
Kendal had an indignant contempt for such a tendency, and the liberty which men who used it took with their art.