as the group was
joined by the professor of rhetoric, an ambitious young man with an
insatiable craving for sophistication, who felt himself for once entirely
in his element in the crowd of celebrities. "It's incredibly good luck
that our little two-for-a-cent college should have so fine a thing," he
said knowingly. "I've been wondering how such an old skinflint as Gridley
ever got the money loose to have his portrait done by--"

A laugh went around the group at the idea. "It was Mackintosh, the sugar
king, who put up for it. He's a great Gridleyite, and persuaded him to
sit."

"_Persuade_ a man to sit to Falleres!" The rhetoric professor was outraged
at the idea.

"Yes, so they say. The professor was dead against it from the first.
Falleres himself had to beg him to sit. Falleres said he felt a real
inspiration at the sight of the old fellow ... knew he could make a good
thing out of him. He _was_ a good subject!"

The little group turned and stared appraisingly at the portrait hanging so
close to them that it seemed another living being in their midst. The
rhetoric professor was asked what kind of a man the philosopher had been
personally, and answered briskly: "Oh, nobody knew him personally ... the
silent old codger. He was a dry-as-dust, bloodless, secular monk--"

He was interrupted by a laugh from the art-critic, whose eyes were still
on the portrait.

"Excuse me for my cynical mirth," he said, "but I must say he doesn't look
it. I was prepared for any characterization but that. He looks like a
powerful son of the Renaissance, who might have lived in that one little
vacation of the soul after medievalism stopped hag-riding us, and before
the modern conscience got its claws on us. And you say he was a blue-nosed
Puritan!"

The professor of rhetoric looked an uneasy fear that he was being
ridiculed. "I only repeated the village notion of him," he said airily.
"He may have been anything. All I know is that he was as secretive as a
clam, and about as interesting personally."

"Look at the picture," said the critic, still laughing; "you'll know all
about him!"

The professor of rhetoric nodded. "You're right, he doesn't look much like
my character of him. I never seem to have had a good, square look at him
before. I've heard several people say the same thing, that they seemed to
understand him better from the portrait than from his living face. There
was something about his eyes that kept you from thinking