Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/109

Rh joined the group to remonstrate in ineffectual French with the model, and glanced into the sketch-book in passing.

"Just the church-window type, isn't he?" said this flippant person, alluding to the Pole; "and I have seen him behind the altar too, painted on the wall with a symmetrical arrangement of stars in the background, and his feet on a blue air-balloon."

The sketcher nodded, and swept in a curved line for the coat collar just as a controlling voice announced that the rest was up.

And I wondered how I had been so dull as never to think of it; for it was perfectly true, and oh, so obvious now that I knew it! Wladislaw's beautiful head, with the young light-brown beard, the pure forehead, and the long sorrowful eyes, was an ideal presentment of the Nazarene; without the alteration of either feature or expression, he stood up a gloriously simple realisation of the Christ as all pictures have tried to show Him.

I was so amazed by this illumination, that I sat down beside the disconsolate impressionist, who "couldn't do a thing till that idiot cooled down," and was "losing half the morning—the Professor's morning, too," and talked it over.

"H'm yes—he is. Hadn't you noticed it? I said it the very day he came in. I wonder if he sees it himself? Do you know, I think I could get rather a good thing of him from here? Yes, you wait; I've nothing to do till that beastly hectic colour fades off the model. I'm not going to bother about the background; I've painted that old green curtain till I'm tired. Get a tabouret and sit down while I design a really good window."

She sketched away rapidly, and I watched her as she worked.

"Funny," she remarked, as she blocked in the figure with admirable freedom; "I've never seen the Christ treated in profile have you? It's rather new—you watch."

It is my regret that I did not disregard every rule and every