THERE comes a day in the lives of some of us when everything appears as if it were pursuing its   
ordinary and normal course. We get up in the morning and go through the usual routine—bath, dressing, 
 
breakfast, all the little accustomed trivialities which have happened thousands of times in our lives 
 
already, and which will doubtless happen thousands of times again. We feel gay or dull as we have felt 
 
thousands of times before, and we think, or we don’t think, of the various occupations that will go 
 
to make up our day, and we never guess that before sunset we shall have our hand on a door—a door 
 
that when opened is to lead the way into clouds of sorrow, or gild our life suddenly with the radiant 
 
light of joy. So silently do the fates work, so secret do they keep their intentions from us.
 
Paul got up that morning as usual at seven o’clock. He had his usual cold bath, which most people 
 
would have found uncomfortably chilly on a November morning, but in which Paul found merely a 
 
refreshing sting. He rubbed himself dry while humming an air from “The Arcadians,” and then put on 
 
his clothes. He went into his studio and found his usual breakfast of coffee and rolls ready for him. 
 
While he ate it he looked into a neat brown pocket-book to refresh his memory as to his engagements 
 
for the day.
 
A small girl was coming to sit for him at ten o’clock. Her name was Marjorie Arnold. She was 
 
possessed of personality and a fascinating dimple. He had caught the personality, but the dimple had 
 
hitherto eluded him. It was extremely fleeting in its appearance. He hoped to catch it and place it on 
 
canvas that morning.
 
There was only one other entry for the day—“4.15. C.C.” It meant that Christopher Charlton was 
 
coming for him that afternoon, and would take him to call on the Duchessa di Corleone, who desired to 
 
have her portrait painted.
 
He felt a certain amount of interest as to the Duchessa’s appearance, but it was only an interest he 
 
had felt dozens of times before concerning possible commissions. Christopher had said she was good-
 
looking. So were a good many people who were no use to Paul as subjects. He painted only those who 
 
interested him. From the others—and there were many—he politely evaded accepting commissions. He was 
 
very much an artist, was Paul. And for this reason partly his income was considerably below the amount 
 
his genius warranted. The other reason was that there were [Pg 106]many people who did not consider 
 
his portraits to be likenesses.
 
At ten o’clock the child appeared with the nurse, who was dismissed for a couple of hours, and armed 
 
with brushes and palette Paul set to work to catch the fleeting dimple.
 
The child—she was five years old—was in a solemn mood. Smiles, and with them the dimple, had 
 
temporarily vanished. She was a quaint little thing with red hair and freckles, and a fascinating 
 
ugliness generally termed the beauté de diable.
 
Paul told her half a dozen stories, including “The Three Bears”, “The Frog Prince”, and Rudyard 
 
Kipling’s “Stute Little Fish.” But neither the squeakiness of the little bear, the faithlessness of 
 
the princess, nor the sufferings of the whale when the shipwrecked mariner danced hornpipes in his 
 
inside had any effect on the dimple.
 
“Suppose,” said Paul at last, “that you tell me a story.”
 
The face was even more solemn.
 
“I don’t know one.”
 
“Make up one,” suggested Paul.
 
There was the ghost of a smile, then solemnity. The flash of hope Paul had experienced died away.
 
“Onst upon a time,” she began gravely, “vere was a little dog an’ a little duck. An’ vey grewed 
 
wings, an’ vey flewed up an’ up an’ up to heaven to God.”
 
There was a pause for effect.
 
 
“What a height,” said Paul admiringly, watching her face. “What happened next?”
 
“When vey got vere,” went on the voice solemnly, “you bet vey wanted to see round. But God said, ‘
 
Not to-day, I guess I’m busy. It’s my last day up here.’ It was. ’Cos ve next day—God died. Isn’
 
t vat a nice story?”
 
No trace of a dimple. Paul was exasperated.
 
“Not a bit a nice story,” he said sternly. “And God couldn’t die.”
 
She put her head on one side and looked at him.
 
“Well, not weally, of course. But ve little dog an’ ve little duck had never seen anybody die, an’ 
 
vey wanted to. So God showed them.” She was laughing at him now in childish triumph, a very imp of 
 
mischief.
 
“Eureka!” cried Paul. And his brush flew to the canvas. Such are the trials and triumphs of portrait 
 
painters.
 
“Come and look at it,” said Paul after ten minutes.
 
She scrambled down from the chair and platform and came round. A small mocking face of pure wickedness 
 
looked at her from the canvas. Her own.
 
“Do you see it?” said Paul, pointing at it with his brush. “And but for your profane little story 
 
there would never have been exactly that expression on your face. We wait for our moments, we artists, 
 
and we catch them—sometimes. And now,” he continued, “you can have a stick of chocolate and brown 
 
your face up to the eyebrows with it. I have finished your portrait, and therefore done with you. I 
 
don’t care what happens to you now."
 
That was Paul. During the time of painting he sought for intimate knowledge of his subjects. Every 
 
tiniest characteristic, every fleeting expression, were noted and stored up in his memory. He could 
 
almost have told you their life history from his minute observation of faces. He knew his subjects as 
 
few of their intimate friends knew them. He guessed their hidden secrets with a power that was almost 
 
uncanny—secrets known only to their own souls—and put the secrets on his canvas. And it was for this 
 
reason that many people did not consider the portraits to be likenesses. He painted the real person, 
 
not merely the mask they wore to the world at large.
 
This fact had been particularly emphasized in his portrait of a certain statesman—one Lord St. Aubyn. 
 
The statesman has nothing to do with the rest of this story, but the incident as far as Paul is 
 
concerned is interesting.
 
St. Aubyn was a man who was much before the public, and no less than five portraits of him had been 
 
commissioned by different societies as a token of their personal gratitude. Four of these, but for the 
 
individuality of technique, might have been replicas [Pg 109]one of the other, and gave instant 
 
satisfaction alike to donors and public.
 
They showed a man with regular features and deep-set eyes, leaning to the accepted military type, a 
 
resolute mouth, and a certain air of distinction and command. One felt that a sculptor of the 
 
“classic convention” would have expressed the type even more admirably. Reserve was there, but with 
 
no hint of mystery or evasion; intellectuality, but little imagination.
 
The fifth portrait by Paul was, one would have said, of another man. It was a picture that seemed 
 
alive with a strange and slightly repellent magnetism, for the eyes smiled at a stranger with a 
 
baffling mockery; they seemed to invite and yet defy his judgment—to taunt him with his impotence and 
 
read the soul behind them.
 
It had been received on exhibition with a storm of outspoken criticism; while the Benevolent Trustees 
 
who had commissioned it, though refraining from audible dissatisfaction, had maintained so eloquent a 
 
silence at their private view, glancing at each other with liftings of eyebrows and pursing of lips, 
 
that Paul had flung round upon them and relieved their embarrassment by declaring the contract to be 
 
null and void. No reasons were asked for or given; the action was taken as a tacit admission of 
 
failure. Yet Paul himself had seemed not ill-satisfied, and had met the chaff which had [Pg 110]
 
greeted him from many of his circle with equanimity.
 
Landor, one of the circle, whose portrait of St. Aubyn in the previous Academy had been hailed as a 
 
most masterly piece of work, had ventured a serious protest.
 
“My dear fellow,” he had said one evening, “you’re letting your imagination play tricks with you. 
 
It’s becoming an absolute disease. I made a most careful study of the man—made him give me 
 
innumerable sittings, and I pledge you my word that I put everything into the face that I could find. 
 
You had three sittings, and God only knows what you’ve put there.”
 
Paul had smoked for a few moments in silence.
 
“Perhaps you’ve hit it,” he had said. “I’ve nothing to say against your ‘Portrait of a rising 
 
Statesman.’ It’s a fine piece of work. But you know all about the Factories Sanitation Amendment 
 
Act, and I can read Sub-section Ten in your handling of the chin. Now I don’t read the papers, and I 
 
know nothing of the man. I tried to get at him and he shut the door in my face. Yet something came 
 
through the keyhole and the cracks by the hinges, and I have painted that. And, as you say, God only 
 
knows what I’ve put in his face; I don’t. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—what I’ve 
 
put there happens to be the truth.”
 
 
“But what have you done with the picture?” Landor had asked. “The B............