"Quantitatively, then, we are all right, Miss Joyce," he said. "But is the latest addition qualitatively satisfactory?"
Joyce wore raised eyebrows and a slightly puzzled smile at these polysyllabic observations. But it is probable that she understood very well.
"It is delightful that you are coming," she repeated.
Craddock might have attempted to get a more personal welcome than this, but at the moment his very observant eye caught sight of a small framed sketch that stood in the circle of lamplight on the table. Instantly his attention was diverted there, nor was it only his artistic attention that was thus captured, for in a glance he saw that this sketch concerned him in ways other than artistic. He put out his hand and drew the picture more immediately under the light, unconscious that he had not even acknowledged Joyce's repeated speech of welcome.
There she knelt in Charles's sketch, on the carpet of forget-me-nots at the water's edge. Her head was turned as in the Reynolds picture, to face the spectator, while her body was in profile. It was possible enough that Charles had begun this water-colour replica of her head from the Reynolds itself, but there were differences in it, subtle and insistent, that showed beyond all doubt that the girl had sat to him for it also. She was engaged, as to her hands, with a white blot of a tea-cup; the dish-cloth which she held in her other hand was green with reflection from the bank beside her which basked in brilliant sunshine. Behind was the weir with its screen of trees, above, a dab of blue was sufficient—neither more nor less—to indicate the serenity of the summer day. Critic to his finger-tips Craddock could appreciate, none better than he, the slenderness of the means employed to portray these things, and the adequacy. No one but a great artist would have dared to omit so much: the foreground of forget-me-nots was two mere swirls of paint, the weir a splash of brown with a smudge of grey to indicate the shadowed water, while a mere twirl of the brush showed the swift current of the river. But in the midst of these mere symbols and notes of colour was her face, and that was a marvel of portraiture, into which an infinity of care was absorbed. Of the same quality were the vague lines that showed the girl's slim body: it was she and no other who knelt among the forget-me-nots. And it seemed to Craddock that just as none but a son could have painted that portrait of Charles' mother, so none but a lover could have painted this. He saw the difference between Joyce and the Reynolds picture now; previously he had only seen the marvellous similarity. But here the blood and heart-beat of the artist throbbed in the exquisite handiwork.
But his artistic sense took the first call on his faculties.
"But a little masterpiece!" he said. "I have never seen a happier moment. That's an inspired boy!"
Philip just shrugged his shoulders at this admiring explosion.
"Ah, that little picture of Joyce," he said. "It has always seemed to me rather sketchy and unfinished. But if you admire it so much, I am sure Joyce would be delighted to let you have it."