“But—why?”
“To put this gentleman in the midst of all the law breakers.”
Miss Van Tuyn crossed the room and joined him in front of the picture, which showed the judge seated in his wig and robes.
“And that is not all,” added Arabian. “This man’s business is to judge others, naughty people who do God knows what, and, it seems, have to be punished sometimes. Is it not?”
“Yes, to be sure.”
“But Mr. Dick Garstin when painting him is saying to himself all the time, ‘And he is naughty, too! And who is going to put on wig and red clothes and tell him he, too, deserves a few months of prison?’ Now is not that true, mademoiselle? Is not that man bad underneath the judge’s skin? And has not Mr. Dick Garstin found this out, and does not he use all his cleverness to show it?”
Miss Van Tuyn looked at Arabian with a stronger interest than any she had shown yet. It was quite true. Garstin had a peculiar faculty for getting at the lower parts of a character and for bringing it to the surface in his portraits. Perhaps in the exercise of this faculty he showed his ingrained cynicism, sometimes even his malice. Arabian had, it seemed, immediately discovered the painter’s predominant quality as a psychologist of the brush.
“You are quite right,” she said. “One feels that someone ought to judge that judge.”
“That is more than a portrait of one man,” said Arabian. “It is a portrait of the world’s hypocrisy.”
In saying this his usually soft voice suddenly took on an almost biting tone.