“I should think so,” she laughed, taking her position again as he looked at her.
“Yes—thank you,” he said. “If you won’t mind looking at me for a minute or two, just at first. I want your eyes, please. After that you can look anywhere you like.”
“Do you always paint the eyes first?” asked Katharine, idly, for the sake of not relapsing into silence.
“Generally—especially if they’re looking straight out of the picture. Then they’re the principal thing, you know. They are like little holes—if you look steadily at them you can see the real person inside. That’s the reason why a portrait that looks at you, if it’s like at all, is so much more like than one that looks away.”
“How naturally you explain things!” exclaimed the young girl, becoming interested at once.
“Things are so natural,” answered the painter. “Everything is natural. That’s one of my brother-in-law’s maxims.”
“It sounds like a truism.”
“Everything that is true sounds like a truism—and is one. We know everything that’s true, and it all sounds old because we do know it all.”
“What an extraordinary way of putting it—to say that we know everything! But we don’t, you know!”
“Oh, yes, we do—as far as we ever can know at all. I don’t mean little peddling properties of petroleum and tricks with telephones—what they call science, you know. I mean about big things that don’t change—ideas.”