He drew a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “it’s good to know that when one
tries to fail one can make such a complete success of it.”
“Tries to fail?”
“Well, no; that’s not quite it, either; I didn’t want to make a failure
of Vard’s picture, but I did so deliberately, with my eyes open, all the
same. It was what one might call a lucid failure.”
“But why--?”
“The why of it is rather complicated. I’ll tell you some time--” He
hesitated. “Come and dine with me at the club by and by, and I’ll tell
you afterwards. It’s a nice morsel for a psychologist.”
At dinner he said little; but I didn’t mind that. I had known him for
years, and had always found something soothing and companionable in his
long abstentions from speech. His silence was never unsocial; it was
bland as a natural hush; one felt one’s self included in it, not left
out. He stroked his beard and gazed absently at me; and when we had
finished our coffee and liqueurs we strolled down to his studio.
At the studio--which was less draped, less posed, less consciously
“artistic” than those of the smaller men--he handed me a cigar, and fell
to smoking before the fire. When he began to talk it was of indifferent
matters, and I had dismissed the hope of hearing more of Vard’s
portrait, when my eye lit on a photograph of the picture. I walked
across the room to look at it, and Lillo presently followed with a
light.
“It certainly is a complete disguise,” he muttered over my shoulder;
then he turned away and stooped to a big portfolio propped against the
wall.
“Did you ever know Miss Vard?” he asked, with his head in the portfolio;
and without waiting for my answer he handed me a crayon sketch of a
girl’s profile.
I had never seen a crayon of Lillo’s, and I lost sight of the sitter’s
personality in the interest aroused by this new aspect of the master’s
complex genius. The few lines--faint, yet how decisive!--flowered out of
the rough paper with the lightness of opening petals. It was a mere hint
of a picture, but vivid as some word that wakens long reverberations in
the memory.