Just as a fine motor-car, perfect in mechanism, punctures a tire and is stalled by the side of the road, so works of genius like Barbara's head of Blizzard do not progress in one swift rush from start to finish. There were whole mornings during which it seemed that things went backward instead of forward, and when she was so discouraged that, had it not been for the legless man's almost fiery confidence in her ability to overcome all obstacles, she must have taken a hammer and pounded her fine sketch back into the lump of clay from which it had been evolved.
Blizzard's eyes had undergone a most thorough schooling. They had learned, to the flicker of an eyelid, when Barbara was going to look their way, and at such times were careful not to meet her eyes. When, however, they knew her to be intent for a period upon the work and not the model, they studied her always with zest, and always with more and more understanding.
Suddenly, one day, after he had been sitting motionless for half an hour, the beggar broke his pose.
"Please don't," she said. "I'm not through."
In his eyes, soft and full of understanding, there was a gentle, if masterful, smiling. "Yes, you are," he said, "for now. I haven't watched you at work all these mornings without learning something about the way you go at it. Do you know what a blind alley is?"
"Yes," she said petulantly, "and I'm in one."
"Quite so," said Blizzard. "And you're not taking the right way out. First you tried to climb up the house on the right, then the house on the left, and when I interrupted you, you were making a sixth effort to shin up the lightning-rod of the house that blocks the alley."
Barbara laughed. "But," she objected, "I've got to get out somehow--or fake--or call the thing a fiasco, and give it up."
"Of course you've got to get out," said Blizzard, "and it's very simple."
"Simple!" she exclaimed; "a lot you know about it."