As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man emerged from an inner
office at the opposite end of the room.
At sight of Woburn he stopped short.
"Mr. Woburn!" he exclaimed; then he stepped nearer and added in a low
tone: "I was requested to tell you when you came that the members of the
firm are waiting; will you step into the private office?"
THE PORTRAIT
It was at Mrs. Mellish's, one Sunday afternoon last spring. We were
talking over George Lillo's portraits--a collection of them was being
shown at Durand-Ruel's--and a pretty woman had emphatically declared:--
"Nothing on earth would induce me to sit to him!"
There was a chorus of interrogations.
"Oh, because--he makes people look so horrid; the way one looks on board
ship, or early in the morning, or when one's hair is out of curl and one
knows it. I'd so much rather be done by Mr. Cumberton!"
Little Cumberton, the fashionable purveyor of rose-water pastels, stroked
his moustache to hide a conscious smile.
"Lillo is a genius--that we must all admit," he said indulgently, as
though condoning a friend's weakness; "but he has an unfortunate
temperament. He has been denied the gift--so precious to an artist--of
perceiving the ideal. He sees only the defects of his sitters; one might
almost fancy that he takes a morbid pleasure in exaggerating their weak
points, in painting them on their worst days; but I honestly believe he
can't help himself.
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