“Yes; he looks awfully unhappy.”
“His wife drugs.”
“Oh, Nollie! How do you know?”
“I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got wandering eyes that go all glassy. He can paint me now, if he likes. I wouldn't let him before. Does he know?”
“Of course not.”
“He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think. But I mind him less than anybody. Is his picture of Daddy good?”
“Powerful, but it hurts, somehow.”
“Let's go down and see it.”
The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange. The black figure, with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening actuality. The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.
“It's the face of that girl,” said Gratian, when they had looked at the picture for some time in silence: