it to have it stay
here--people forget so. Everybody'll think that Gridley looked like
_that_! And there isn't anybody but me. He never had anybody but me."

The critic tried to clear the air by a roundly declaratory statement of
principles. "You'll pardon my bluntness, madam; but you must remember that
none but the members of Professor Gridley's family are concerned in the
exact details of his appearance. Fifty years from now nobody will remember
how he looked, one way or the other. The world is only concerned with
portraits as works of art."

She followed his reasoning with a strained and docile attention and now
spoke eagerly as though struck by an unexpected hope: "If that's all, why
put his name to it? Just hang it up, and call it anything."

She shrank together timidly and her eyes reddened at the laughter which
greeted this naive suggestion.

Falleres looked annoyed and called his
defender off. "Oh, never mind explaining me," he said, snapping his watch
shut. "You'll never get the rights of it through anybody's head who hasn't
himself sweat blood over a composition only to be told that the other side
of the sitter's profile is usually considered the prettier. After all, we
have the last word, since the sitter dies and the portrait lives."

The old woman started and looked at him attentively.

"Yes," said the critic, laughing, "immortality's not a bad balm for
pin-pricks."

The old woman turned very pale and for the first time looked again at the
portrait. An electric thrill seemed to pass through her as her eyes
encountered the bold, evil ones fixed on her. She stood erect with a rigid
face, and "Immortality!" she said, under her breath.

Falleres moved away to make his adieux to the president, and the little
group of his satellites straggled after him to the other end of the room.
For a moment there no one near the old woman to see the crutch furiously
upraised, hammer-like, or to stop her sudden passionate rush upon the
picture.

At the sound of cracking cloth, they turned back, horrified. They saw her,
with an insane violence, thrust her hands into the gaping hole that had
been the portrait's face and, tearing the canvas from end to end, fall
upon the shreds with teeth and talon.

All but Falleres flung themselves toward her, dragging her away. With a
movement as instinctive he rushed for the picture, and it was to him, as
he stood aghast before the ruined canvas, that the old woman's shrill
trebl