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“Some little inaccuracy does it,” he said; “eyebrows probably too oblique,”–therewith pulling the blind lower to get a better light, and resuming palette and brushes.

The face on the canvas seemed animated by a spirit of its own. Where the expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to discover. Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows–it could scarcely be the eyebrows? But he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth? Pah! more than ever a leer–and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. The eye, then? Catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! The eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket, and was glaring at him an eye of fire. In a flash of passion, possibly with something of the courage of panic, he struck the brush full of bright red athwart the picture; and then a very curious thing, a very strange thing indeed, occurred–if it did occur.

The diabolified Italian before him shut both his eyes, pursed his mouth, and wiped the colour off his face with his hand.

Then the red eye opened again, with a sound like the opening of lips, and the face smiled. “That was rather hasty of you,” said the picture.

Harringay states that, now that the worst had happened, his self-possession returned. He had a saving persuasion that devils were reasonable creatures.

“Why do you keep moving about then,” he said, “making faces and all that–sneering and squinting, while I am painting you?”

“I don’t,” said the picture.

“You do,” said Harringay.

“It’s yourself,” said the picture.

“It’s not myself,” said Harringay.

“It is yourself,” said the picture. “No! don’t go hitting me with paint again, because it’s true. You have been trying to fluke an expression on my face all the morning. Really, you haven’t an idea what your picture ought to look like.”

“I have,” said Harringay.

“You have not,” said the picture: “You never have with your pictures. You always start with the vaguest presentiment of what you are going to do; it is to be something beautiful–you are sure of that–and devout, perhaps, or tragic; but beyond that it is all experiment and chance. My dear fellow! you don’t think you can paint a picture like that?”

Now it must be remembered that for what follows we have only Harringay’s word.

“I shall paint a picture exactly as I like,” said Harringay, calmly.

This seemed to disconcert the picture a little. “You can’t paint a picture without an inspiration,” it remarked.

“But I had an inspiration–for this.”

“Inspiration!” sneered the sardonic figure; “a fancy that came from your seeing an organ-grinder looking up at a window! Vigil! Ha, ha! You just started painting on the chance of something coming–that’s what you did. And when I saw you at it I came. I want a talk with you!”

“Art, with you,” said the picture,–“it’s a poor business. You potter. I don’t know how it is, but you don’t seem able to throw your soul into it. You know too much. It hampers you. In the midst of your enthusiasms you ask yourself whether something like this has not been done before. And …”

“Look here,” said Harringay, who had expected something better than criticism from the devil. “Are you going to talk studio to me?” He filled his number twelve hoghair with red paint.

“The true artist,” said the picture, “is always an ignorant man. An artist who theorises about his work is no longer artist but critic. Wagner … I say!–What’s that red paint for?”

“I’m going to paint you out,” said Harringay. “I don’t want to hear all that Tommy Rot. If you think just because I’m an artist by trade I’m going to talk studio to you, you make a precious mistake.”

“One minute,” said the picture, evidently alarmed. “I want to make you an offer–a genuine offer. It’s right what I’m saying. You lack inspirations. Well. No doubt you’ve heard of the Cathedral of Cologne, and the Devil’s Bridge, and–“