The sensation was followed by the thought:
if he _were_ watching me, what would he say to my way of working? My
strokes began to go a little wild--I felt nervous and uncertain.
"Once, when I looked up, I seemed to see a smile behind his close
grayish beard--as if he had the secret, and were amusing himself by
holding it back from me. That exasperated me still more. The secret?
Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvas
furiously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me,
they crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits--I
couldn't distract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard
passages between. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or
covered up with some lying paint. And how he saw through my lies!
"I looked up again, and caught sight of that sketch of the donkey
hanging on the wall near his bed. His wife told me afterward it was
the last thing he had done--just a note taken with a shaking hand,
when he was down in Devonshire recovering from a previous heart
attack.
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