"But that isn't all," he added, tilting back to study his canvas through half-shut eyes. "The public doesn't know Atwood's true metier. He's bigger than they think. I'll show you something in a minute. It's time for rest."
He lingered for a brush stroke, which at one sweep filled a languid fold of drapery with action, and then crossed the studio to the stack of unfinished work beside the wall.
"Wait," he warned, placing a canvas in the trial frame and wheeling an easel tentatively. "It's in the rough, but we can give it light and a setting. Now look. That's what I call portraiture."
Even her unschooled eye perceived its strength. It was MacGregor who looked out at her, MacGregor as she herself had twice seen him that day with his working fit upon him, New York forgotten, Africa filling every thought.
"And Mr. Atwood did it?"
"Nobody else. He sat over there in that corner, while I worked in mine, and painted what he saw."
"It's a wonderful likeness."
"Likeness!" MacGregor shook the poor word contemptuously. "Likeness! Child, it's divination!"
He dismissed her early in the afternoon, for it was raining fitfully and the light was uncertain, and on leaving she turned her steps toward the Astor Library, intent on a purpose inspired by MacGregor's talk. She had some acquaintance with the lending libraries, but none with this sedate edifice whose size and gloom oppressed her as she looked vainly about for her elderly fellow-boarder who spent his life somewhere amidst its dinginess. In this quandary, she was spied by a mannered attendant whose young face, framed in obsolete side-whiskers, reminded her of certain middle-Victorian bucks of Thackeray's whom she had come to know during spare moments at the dental parlors. This guide led her into a large reading-room where he assured her ladies were welcome, despite the frowns of the predominant sex whose peace they ruffled, and found her the two or three illustrated periodicals she named.
Without exception these contained Atwood's work, a fact which impressed her tremendously; and without exception they bore testimony to his superiority as emphatically as MacGregor. She pored over these drawings one by one, weighing them much as she weighed his spoken thought, and judging them, no less than his speech, most candid mirrors of his personality. In what this personality's appeal consisted, she had neither the detachment nor the wish to define; she could only uncritically feel its sincerity, its romance, and its power.