He meant to outstay the rest, for he wished to speak with Wetmore
alone, and it seemed as though those people would never go. They went
at last. Mrs. Wetmore herself went off to the domestic quarter of the
apartment, and left the two men together.
"'Baccy?" asked Wetmore, with a hospitable gesture toward the pipes on
his mantel.
"No, thank you," said Ludlow.
"Well?"
"Wetmore, what was it you saw in my picture today, when you began with
that 'Hello' of yours, and then broke off to say something else?"
"Did I do that? Well, if you really wish to know----"
"I do!"
"I'll tell you. I was going to ask you which of those two girls you had
painted it from. The topography was the topography of Miss Maybough,
but the landscape was the landscape of Miss Saunders." He waited, as if
for Ludlow to speak; then he went on: "I supposed you had been working
from some new theory of yours, and I thought I had said about as much
on your theories as you would stand for the time."
"Was that all?" Ludlow asked.
"All? It seems to me that's a good deal to be compressed into one small
'hello.'"
Wetmore lighted a pipe, and began to smoke in great comfort. "We were
talking, just before you dropped in, of what you may call the psychical
chemistry of our kind of shop: the way a fellow transmutes himself into
everything he does. I can trace the man himself in every figure he
draws or models. You can't get away from yourself, simply because you
are always thinking yourself, or through yourself; you can't see or
know any one else in any other way."
"It's a very curious thing," said Ludlow, uneasily. "I've noticed that,
too; I suppose every one has. But--good-night."
Wetmore followed him out of the studio to the head of the public stairs
with a lamp, and Ludlow stopped there again. "Should you think there
was anything any one but you would notice?"
"You mean the two girls themselves? Well, I should say, on general
principles, that what two such girls didn't see in your work----"
"Of course! Then--what would you do? Would you speak to her about it?"
"Which?"
"You know: Miss Saunders."
"Ah! It seems rather difficult, doesn't it?"
"Confoundedly."
"Why, if you mean to say it was unconscious, perhaps I was mistaken.
The thing may have been altogether in my own mind. I'd like to take
another look at it----"
"You can't. I've painted it out." Ludlow ran down one flight of the
stairs, and then came stumbling quickly back. "I say, Wetmore. Do you
tell your wife everything?"
"My dear boy, I don't tell her anything. She finds it out. But, then,
_she_ never tells anybody."