not have told you, but it seemed to him that the mystery of how to do it
was revealed to him afresh every time he sat down to his work. It was in
the eyes and it was in the mouth, it was in every line of the face and
every fact of the attitude, in the indentation of the chin, in the way
the hair was planted, the moustache was twisted, the smile came and
went, the breath rose and fell. It was in the way he looked out at a
bamboozled world in short--the way he would look out for ever. There
were half a dozen portraits in Europe that Lyon rated as supreme; he
regarded them as immortal, for they were as perfectly preserved as they
were consummately painted. It was to this small exemplary group that he
aspired to annex the canvas on which he was now engaged. One of the
productions that helped to compose it was the magnificent Moroni of the
National Gallery--the young tailor, in the white jacket, at his board
with his shears. The Colonel was not a tailor, nor was Moroni's model,
unlike many tailors, a liar; but as regards the masterly clearness with
which the individual should be rendered his work would be on the same
line as that. He had to a degree in which he had rarely had it before
the satisfaction of feeling life grow and grow under his brush. The
Colonel, as it turned out, liked to sit and he liked to talk while he
was sitting: which was very fortunate, as his talk largely constituted
Lyon's inspiration. Lyon put into practice that idea of drawing him out
which he had been nursing for so many weeks: he could not possibly have
been in a better relation to him for the purpose. He encouraged,
beguiled, excited him, manifested an unfathomable credulity, and his
only interruptions were when the Colonel did not respond to it. He had
his intermissions, his hours of sterility, and then Lyon felt that the
picture also languished. The higher his companion soared, the more
gyrations he executed, in the blue, the better he painted; he couldn't
make his flights long enough. He lashed him on when he flagged; his
apprehension became great at moments that the Colonel would discover his
game. But he never did, apparently; he basked and expanded in the fine
steady light of the painter's attention. In this way the picture grew
very fast; it was astonishing what a short business it was, compared
with the little girl's. By the fifth of August it was pretty well
finished: that was the date of the last sitting the Colonel was for the
present