"Jean Marie Stine - Future Eves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stine Jean Marie)

disappointment of being ruined by one you trusted." Mr. Brownell would have
pushed this last aside, but Miss Wormersley was for facing the facts. "What else can
we think? No one else knew except myself and Miss Sayre, and surely no one will
accuse me. I never painted even a barn door."
Mrs. Beekman-Smythe now asked gently, "Why do you feel so sure Miss Sayre did
this? Surely it's Bertram's style in every tiny detail."
"Yes, but we know, Miss Sayre and I, that Bertram did not touch that canvas either
last evening or the evening before that. As to the night the first head was painted, he
was here in the studio alone and neither Miss Sayre nor I noticed the picture when
we went to bed. But last night and Tuesday night my nephew spent the entire evening
in the living-room with us. I, myself, locked that window the last thing before I
retired, and the space was empty on that canvas that we found filled the following
morning. Miss Sayre knew just what my nephew hoped to portray on each face, and
for two months he has been teaching her a certain stroke they both agree is used
there. Besides, both nights my maid has heard Miss Sayre come upstairs, and at the
same time she says she heard Bertram snoring. Then last night Miss Sayre's bed
wasn't even slept in. She is the only one who could have done it."
"But the window?" put in Mrs. Beekman-Smythe.
Miss Wormersley shrugged impatiently. "An attempt to avert suspicion. And this
morning one of the brushes is missing."
Mrs. Beekman-Smythe turned to Minna. She regarded the girl speculatively a few
moments, and her expression softened. Miss Wormersley didn't wonder as she
noted Minna's forlorn appearance.
Suddenly the art patroness went to the girl and held out her hand with a smile. Minna
hesitated a second then placed her own in it eagerly. Her composure almost gave
way at the warm pressure, then she left the room quickly. When she returned Miss
Wormersley was showing Mr. Brownell one of the girl's own animal pictures. She
was holding it so that the light fell full upon it, and was looking questioningly from
the critic to the patroness. The critic examined it with care, glancing frequently
towards the big canvas.
"No, no," he said, half aloud. "Well, I suppose it's possible, eh, Mrs.
Beekman-Smythe; such things have been done under stress of great excitement.
What do you say, Bert?"
He spoke twice before he was able to rouse the artist and then his only response was
a look of misery and a murmured, "It isn't mine, it isn't mine, I can never paint
again."
Mrs. Beekman-Smythe's eye filled with pity and she explained to Miss Wormersley
that her nephew had lost faith in himself. "Too bad, too bad," she said, "it would
have been better to have lost his picture altogether than to lose his self-confidence."
Then to Mr. Brownell, "There's no one else who, you think, could have, I mean
would be able, to paint that picture, is there?"
The critic stepped to the big canvas and studied it more closely.
"No," he finally said, "only Orlaf, the Russian. He is supposed to have made an
exhaustive study of wolves, but this isn't his style at all."
He turned suddenly from the picture.
"Would it have won?" The question fell unwittingly from Mrs. Beekman-Smythe.
"It must have." There was no shadow of a doubt in the critic's tone. "I've never seen
its equal. And now it's lost. It's an unknown, unless..." He looked from the artist's
bowed head to the girl gazing disconsolately at the falling rain.
"Look here, my dear." He spoke kindly as he drew Minna from the window. "I