It met, in short, at every point the
demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" because she was
tired of being painted "sweetly"--and yet not to lose an atom of the
sweetness.
"It's the last he painted, you know," Mrs. Gisburn said with
pardonable pride. "The last but one," she corrected herself--"but
the other doesn't count, because he destroyed it."
"Destroyed it?" I was about to follow up this clue when I heard a
footstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold.
As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen coat,
the thin brown waves of hair pushed back from his white forehead,
his lean sunburnt cheeks furrowed by a smile that lifted the tips of
a self-confident moustache, I felt to what a degree he had the same
quality as his pictures--the quality of looking cleverer than he
was.
His wife glanced at him deprecatingly, but his eyes travelled past
her to the portrait.
"Mr. Rickham wanted to see it," she began, as if excusing herself.
He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling.
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