"I've been reading the morning paper on your exhibition," he said,
bringing out the journal from his pocket. "They can't say enough about
you."

"Oh, can't they! Well, the better for me. What are they pleased to
discover?"

"They say you see round corners and through deal boards. Listen." He
struck open the paper and read: "'A man with a hidden crime upon his
soul will do well to elude this greatest of modern magicians. The man
with a secret tells it the instant he sits down before Jerome Wilmer.
Wilmer does not paint faces, brows, hands. He paints hopes, fears, and
longings. If we could, in our turn, get to the heart of his mystery! If
we could learn whether he says to himself: "I see hate in that face,
hypocrisy, greed. I will paint them. That man is not man, but cur. He
shall fawn on my canvas." Or does he paint through a kind of inspired
carelessness, and as the line obeys the eye and hand, so does the
emotion live in the line?'"

"Oh, gammon!" snapped Wilmer.

"Well, do you?" said Marshby, tossing the paper to the little table
where Mary's work-box stood.

"Do I what? Spy and then paint, or paint and find I've spied? Oh, I
guess I plug along like any other decent workman. When it comes to that,
how do you write your essays?"

"I! Oh! That's another pair of sleeves. Your work is colossal. I'm still