This was partly because I did not want to hurt him, and partly because a white cumulus cloud is a bad part of your sketch to kill a black beetle on.
I washed over my paper once more, and holding it on my knee to dry just as much and no more than was desirable, I looked my subject in the face with a view to colour.
A long time passed.

I had looked and looked again; I had washed in and washed out; I had realized the difficulty of the subject without flinching, and had tried hard to see and represent the colouring before me, when Clement (having exhausted his water in a similar process) came down the hill behind me, with a surly and sunburnt face, to replenish his bottle at a wayside water-trough.
It was then that, as he said, he found me crying.
"It's not because it's difficult and I'm very stupid," I whimpered.

"I don't mind working on and trying to make the best of a thing.

And it's not the wind or the sand, though it has got dreadfully into the paints, particularly the Italian Pink; but what makes me hopeless, Clement, is that I don't believe it would look well if I could paint it perfectly.
It looked lovely as we were driving home the other evening, but now---- Just look at those fields, Clem; I _know_ they're green, but really and truly I _see_ them just the same colour as this road, and I don't think there is the difference of a shade between them and that gate-post.

What shall I do ?" A tear fell out of my eyelashes and dropped on to my river.