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Did she suspect it? I think not–then. He was wrapped in her impervious faith… The papers? Oh, their charges were set down to political rivalry; and the only people she saw were his hangers-on, or the fashionable set who had taken him up for their amusement. Besides, she would never have found out in that way: at a direct accusation her resentment would have flamed up and smothered her judgment. If the truth came to her, it would come through knowing intimately some one–different; through–how shall I put it?–an imperceptible shifting of her centre of gravity. My besetting fear was that I couldn’t count on her obtuseness. She wasn’t what is called clever; she left that to him; but she was exquisitely good; and now and then she had intuitive felicities that frightened me. Do I make you see her? We fellows can explain better with the brush; I don’t know how to mix my words or lay them on. She wasn’t clever; but her heart thought– that’s all I can say…

If she’d been stupid it would have been easy enough: I could have painted him as he was. Could have? I did–brushed the face in one day from memory; it was the very man! I painted it out before she came: I couldn’t bear to have her see it. I had the feeling that I held her faith in him in my hands, carrying it like a brittle object through a jostling mob; a hair’s- breadth swerve and it was in splinters.

When she wasn’t there I tried to reason myself out of these subtleties. My business was to paint Vard as he was–if his daughter didn’t mind his looks, why should I? The opportunity was magnificent–I knew that by the way his face had leapt out of the canvas at my first touch. It would have been a big thing. Before every sitting I swore to myself I’d do it; then she came, and sat near him, and I–didn’t.

I knew that before long she’d notice I was shirking the face. Vard himself took little interest in the portrait, but she watched me closely, and one day when the sitting was over she stayed behind and asked me when I meant to begin what she called “the likeness.” I guessed from her tone that the embarrassment was all on my side, or that if she felt any it was at having to touch a vulnerable point in my pride. Thus far the only doubt that troubled her was a distrust of my ability. Well, I put her off with any rot you please: told her she must trust me, must let me wait for the inspiration; that some day the face would come; I should see it suddenly– feel it under my brush… The poor child believed me: you can make a woman believe almost anything she doesn’t quite understand. She was abashed at her philistinism, and begged me not to tell her father–he would make such fun of her!

After that–well, the sittings went on. Not many, of course; Vard was too busy to give me much time. Still, I could have done him ten times over. Never had I found my formula with such ease, such assurance; there were no hesitations, no obstructions–the face was there, waiting for me; at times it almost shaped itself on the canvas. Unfortunately Miss Vard was there too …

All this time the papers were busy with the viaduct scandal. The outcry was getting louder. You remember the circumstances? One of Vard’s associates–Bardwell, wasn’t it?–threatened disclosures. The rival machine got hold of him, the Independents took him to their bosom, and the press shrieked for an investigation. It was not the first storm Vard had weathered, and his face wore just the right shade of cool vigilance; he wasn’t the man to fall into the mistake of appearing too easy. His demeanor would have been superb if it had been inspired by a sense of his own strength; but it struck me rather as based on contempt for his antagonists. Success is an inverted telescope through which one’s enemies are apt to look too small and too remote. As for Miss Vard, her serenity was undiminished; but I half-detected a defiance in her unruffled sweetness, and during the last sittings I had the factitious vivacity of a hostess who hears her best china crashing.