“Quite simple. If you had used your eyes on it instead of your temper, you might have seen at once that it is a tracing. Look for yourself, now.”
Taking the magnifying monocle that Kent held out, the artist scrutinized the lines of the picture.
“By Jove! You’re right,” said he. “It’s been transferred through tracing-paper, and touched up afterward. Rather roughly, too. You can see where the copyist has borne down too hard on the lead.”
“What’s your opinion of the likeness—if it is the likeness which you suppose?” inquired Kent.
“Why, as I remember the woman, this picture is a good deal idealized. The hair and the eyes are much the same. But the lines of the face in the picture are finer. The chin and mouth are more delicate, and the whole effect softer and of a higher type.”
“Do you see anything strange about the neck, on the left side?”
“Badly drawn; that’s all.”
“Just below the ear there is a sort of blankness, isn’t there?”
“Why, yes. It seems curiously unfinished, just there.”
“If you were touching it up how would you correct that?”