From the confused babble I was straining to sift a grain of truth. It seemed that Wallace Wray had been outraging the feelings of his admirers, had dealt them a slap in the face as cleanly, or rather as dirtily, as a realistic brush could deal it. In the nick of time, Spry, a brother of the craft and the very sieve I needed, jostled at my elbow.
"Splendid likeness—the best he has ever done, eh? He calls it 'The Body of Me.' Ha! ha! The Corporation of H—— commissioned, it, and luckily he got it finished before he took leave of his senses."
"Senses!" I echoed, stupidly. "What is wrong? What has he been saying, doing?"
"More antics! Haven't you seen 'The Soul of Me,' there, in the next room?"
And Spry, scarcely waiting for dissent, led off, inviting me, by backward twists of the head, to follow his pioneering.
The crowd was too great for conversation, but it was easy to know from the congested state of the room in a particular spot where Wray's work must be hung. When patience was nearly exhausted we reached it. Comments and criticisms were freely bandied aloud.
"Decidedly morbid," spake a sightseer in disgust.
"Hideous! I wouldn't own such a picture for worlds," confided one woman to another.
"It is astounding," an art critic remarked to his companion, whose face I knew. "What power, what genius, yet——"
"Genius is a loganstone," said the other, shaking his head. "It rocks and rocks, but a stalk of asphodel may shift it from its centre."