Ruth, arriving a few moments later, was met by Kirk with the card in his hand.
“Can you throw any light on this?” he said. “Who is Miss Wilbur, who has what you might call a lively manner and appears disappointed when she does not find us at home?”
Ruth looked at the card.
“Sybil Wilbur? I wonder what she wants.”
“Who is she? Let’s get that settled first.”
“Oh, she’s a girl I used to know. I haven’t seen her for two years. I thought she had forgotten my existence.”
“Call her up on the phone. If we don’t solve this mystery we shan’t sleep tonight. It’s like Robinson Crusoe and the footprint.”
Ruth went to the telephone. After a short conversation she turned to Kirk with sparkling eyes and the air of one with news to impart.
“Kirk! She wants you to paint her portrait!”
“What!”
“She’s engaged to Bailey! Just got engaged! And the first thing she does is to insist on his letting her come to you for her portrait,” Ruth bubbled with laughter. “It’s to be a birthday present for Bailey, and Bailey has got to pay for it. That’s so exactly like Sybil.”
“I hope the portrait will be. She’s taking chances.”
“I think it’s simply sweet of her. She’s a real friend.”
“At fairly long intervals, apparently. Did you say you had not seen her for two years?”
“She is an erratic little thing with an awfully good heart. I feel touched at her remembering us. Oh, Kirk, you must do a simply wonderful portrait, something that everybody will talk about, and then our fortune will be made! You will become the only painter that people will go to for their portraits.”
Kirk did not answer. His experiences of late had developed in him an unwonted mistrust of his powers. To this was added the knowledge that, except for an impressionist study of Ruth for private exhibition only, he had never attempted a portrait. To be called upon suddenly like this to show his powers gave him much the same feeling which he had experienced when called upon as a child to recite poetry before an audience. It was a species of stage fright.
But it was certainly a chance. Portrait-painting was an uncommonly lucrative line of business. His imagination, stirred by Ruth’s, saw visions of wealthy applicants turned away from the studio door owing to pressure of work on the part of the famous man for whose services they were bidding vast sums.
“By Jove!” he said thoughtfully.
Another aspect of the matter occurred to him.
“I wonder what Bailey thinks about it!”
“Oh, he’s probably so much in love with her that he doesn’t mind what she does. Besides, Bailey likes you.”
“Does he?”
“Oh, well, if he doesn’t, he will. This will bring you together.”
“I suppose he knows about it?”
“Oh, yes. Sybil said he did. It’s all settled. She will be here tomorrow for the first sitting.”
Kirk spoke the fear that was in his mind.
“Ruth, old girl, I’m horribly nervous about this. I am taken with a sort of second sight. I see myself making a ghastly failure of this job and Bailey knocking me down and refusing to come across with the cheque.”
“Sybil is bringing the cheque with her tomorrow,” said Ruth simply.
“Is she?” said Kirk. “Now I wonder if that makes it worse or better. I’m trying to think!”
Sybil Wilbur fluttered in next day at noon, a tiny, restless creature who darted about the studio like a hummingbird. She effervesced with the joy of life. She uttered little squeaks of delight at everything she saw. She hugged Ruth, beamed at Kirk, went wild over William Bannister, thought the studio too cute for words, insisted on being shown all over it, and talked incessantly.
It was about two o’clock before she actually began to sit, and even then she was no statue. A thought would come into her small head and she would whirl round to impart it to Ruth, destroying in a second the pose which it had taken Kirk ten painful minutes to fix.
Kirk was too amused to be irritated. She was such a friendly little soul and so obviously devoted to Ruth that he felt she was entitled to be a nuisance as a sitter. He wondered more and more what weird principle of selection had been at work to bring Bailey and this butterfly together. He had never given any deep thought to the study of his brother-in-law’s character; but, from his small knowledge of him, he would have imagined someone a trifle more substantial and serious as the ideal wife for him. Life, he conceived, was to Bailey a stately march. Sybil Wilbur evidently looked on it as a mad gallop.
Ruth felt the same. She was fond of Sybil, but she could not see her as the foreordained Mrs. Bailey.
“I suppose she swept him off his feet,” she said. “It just shows that you never really get to know a person even if you’re their sister. Bailey must have all sorts of hidden sides to his character which I never noticed—unless she has. But I don’t think there is much of that about Sybil. She’s just a child. But she’s very amusing, isn’t she? She enjoys life so furiously.”
“I think Bailey will find her rather a handful. Does she ever sit still, by the way? If she is going to act right along as she did today this portrait will look like that cubist picture of the Dance at the Spring.”
As the sittings went on Miss Wilbur consented gradually to simmer down and the portrait progressed with a fair amount of speed. But Kirk was conscious every day of a growing sensation of panic. He was trying his very hardest, but it was bad work, and he knew it.
His hand had never had very much cunning, but
