He paused a moment, for the sake of emphasis. "You will notice," he
resumed carefully, "the lace frill above the bodice on the figure of
Madame de Montespan, in this radiograph. In the painting the frill is
sharply defined and can be clearly distinguished from the bodice. But
look at this radiograph. It appears tattered. It overflows the bodice.

"That led me to suspect that the bodice was widened as an
afterthought--perhaps to diminish the area of white. That is the reason
why the white shows through the bodice in the radiograph. But in this
other one the bodice and the frill are substantially as they must be in
the original."

Again he paused, as if taking up a new point. "This radiograph,--number
one, I may call it--shows a broad light band on the right hand of the
figure, of which not a trace is to be found either in the other
radiograph or the painting itself. It represents the first rough sketch
of an arm and hand.

"Again, in this first radiograph the ring and little fingers are close
together and a sixth finger appears between the index and middle
fingers. From that I infer that the hand hung limp with the fingers
nearly in contact in the first sketch and that the fingers were
afterward separated. But in this second radiograph the arm, hand and
fingers are perfect."

It was fascinating to listen to Kennedy as he delved down into the
invisible beneath the very oils and dug out their hidden mystery.

"Take the head and shoulder," he continued. "Radiograph number one
clearly shows flaking of the painting which has been painted over to
conceal it. Ordinary light reveals no trace, either, of a long crack on
the shoulder which evidently was filled with a thick mass of pigment
containing too little white lead to obliterate the crack in the
radiograph. White spots above the ear, in the radiograph, probably
indicate an excess of white lead used in retouching. At any rate,
radiograph number two contains no such defects."

Kennedy paused before drawing the conclusion. "The radiograph of an
original picture reveals changes made by the artist in the course of his
work. The counterfeiter, like other copyists, reproduces as accurately
as possible the final result. That is all he can see. He makes errors
and corrections, but of a different kind. There are no serious changes.

"So, a radiograph of even a part of a picture shows the layers of
pigment that are hidden from the eye and the changes made during the
compositio