He was trying his
very hardest, but it was bad work, and he knew it.
His hand had never had very much cunning, but what it had had it had
lost in the years of his idleness. Every day showed him more clearly
that the portrait of Miss Wilbur, on which so much depended, was an
amateurish daub. He worked doggedly on, but his heart was cold with
that chill that grips the artist when he looks on his work and sees it
to be bad.
At last it was finished. Ruth thought it splendid. Sybil Wilbur
pronounced it cute, as she did most things. Kirk could hardly bear to
look at it. In its finished state it was worse than he could have
believed possible.
In the old days he had been a fair painter with one or two bad faults.
Now the faults seemed to have grown like weeds, choking whatever of
merit he might once have possessed. This was a horrible production, and
he was profoundly thankful when it was packed up and removed from the
studio. But behind his thankfulness lurked the feeling that all was not
yet over, that there was worse to come.
It came.
It was heralded by a tearful telephone call from Miss Wilbur, who rang
up Ruth with the agitated information that "Bailey didn't seem to like
it." And on the heels of the message came Bailey in person, pink from
forehead to collar, and almost as wrathful as he had been on the great
occasion of his first visit to the studio.
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