The Judgment Books: A Story

by E. F. Benson

"It is very odd," he murmured to himself. "I saw it so clearly just now."

He stood looking from one to the other, and a frown gathered on his face. When Margery had been there with him he had seen something quite different to what he saw now. He had seen himself as she saw him, but the face which frowned back at him from the looking-glass was the face of another man.

He laid the palette and the dry brushes down, and took a piece of paper and began drawing on it. Line for line he reproduced the face he had drawn earlier in the morning, which he had erased once.

"It is no good," he said; "I must draw what I am, not what Margery thinks me." And, taking a piece of breadcrumb from the breakfast-table, he rubbed out the face which he had drawn when Margery was standing at his side. He looked again at the sketch he had made. He felt that he could not draw it any other way. The eyelids were a little drooped; the whole face a little faded, but still eager. The noises of a gay city were in its ears; the eyes, half unfocussed, looking outward and a little sideways, were half amused, half wearied. The mouth smiled slightly, and the lips were parted; but the smile was not altogether wholesome. But through it all the face had a wistful expression—the tired eyes seemed to long for something different from the things which were sweet and bitter and bad, but had not the strength to cease from looking on them.

Frank took up his crayon again. There was still something about the mouth which did not satisfy him. He looked at his reflection and back again several times before he saw what was wanting. Then he made two rapid strokes, increasing the line of shadow in the mouth, and the thing was finished. The expression he had tried to catch for so long was there, and he wondered whether Margery would see it with the same eyes as he did.

Later in the morning Margery strolled into the studio again, expecting to find him painting. He was drawing busily when she entered, and did not look up. The face which she had seen him draw at breakfast-time was gone, and some faintly indicated lines of another face had taken its place. Frank always drew with extreme care, but usually with great rapidity, and to her eyes he seemed to have done nothing since she had left him.

"Well, how goes it?" she asked.

"It goes slowly, but I am working very carefully," he said.

He stood away from the portrait and let her see it. He had strengthened the outline since she had been in at breakfast, and sketched in the background.

"Why, it's splendid!" she said. "That's exactly the way you loll on the edge of the table. Frank, it's awfully good. But why have you rubbed out the face?"