ing preliminary study or two from a
gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of
white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic.

Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant
to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric
cleverness. Painters would hate it--stand hypnotised, spellbound the
while--and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of
pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art;
they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay
perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly.
What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an
actor who was eminently fitted to play _Lear_, should bow to his
audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap?

Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the
picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it
with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall--studies
that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly
earnest--connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest
land of ours.

There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that
great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and
all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of
mockery ever latent in the young man's brush--something far more subtle
than caricature or parody--deeper than the imitation of
manner--something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which
seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely,
transforming its menace into a caress.

There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged
six and seven--quaintly and engagingly formal in their naive
astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch
of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him
the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his
dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter
picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and
Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety
drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud.

For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward
something of that internal glow which never entirely