"I feel a fraud, Hillary," he resumed.
"So long as you aren't found out—" began Hillary.
"I have found myself out," retorted Lucas. "I boasted I could make an income for her—and look at this daub!"
"The public likes daubs."
"If they know the signature; yes, by all means. But who knows mine?"
"Some Jews are great picture-buyers," suggested Hillary.
An answering gleam lit Lucas's eye for an instant, and then burned out.
"For the artist there are three ways of making a living," he pronounced. "One is painting for the million—children with rosy cheeks and large wheelbarrows; beds with angels hovering over them and kind doctors with stethoscopes sitting beside them—that sort of thing—the obvious road to the heart. The second is hitting the superior kind of idiot in the eye—inventing a cheap new formula—putting a goblin upside down in one corner, an immoral-looking woman in another, and passing the arrangement off as an allegory. Then up jumps an interpreter and booms you. The third is slowly making your name by the sweat of your brow, and selling your pictures when you are fifty-five to people who never recognized their merit till they had been told you were famous."
"Well," said Hillary, "that gives you a biggish target."