HE VERDICT

I HAD always thought Jack Gisburn rather a cheap genius--though a good
fellow enough--so it was no great surprise to me to hear that, in the
height of his glory, he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow,
and established himself in a villa on the Riviera. (Though I rather
thought it would have been Rome or Florence.)

"The height of his glory"--that was what the women called it. I can
hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing--his last Chicago sitter--deploring his
unaccountable abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of my
picture 'way up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham--the loss to
Arrt is all I think of." The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multiplied
its _rs_ as though they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors.
And it was not only the Mrs. Thwings who mourned. Had not the exquisite
Hermia Croft, at the last Grafton Gallery show, stopped me before
Gisburn's "Moon-dancers" to say, with tears in her eyes: "We shall not
look upon its like again"?

Well!--even through the prism of Hermia's tears I felt able to face the
fact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisburn! The women had made him--it was
fitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewer regrets
were heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professional
jealousy? Perhaps. If it were, the honour of the craft was vindicated
by little Claude Nutley, who, in all good faith, brought out in the
Burlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack--one of those showy
articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won't
say by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so--his resolve being
apparently irrevocable--the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs.
Thwing had predicted, the price of "Gisburns" went up.

It was not till three years later that, in the course of a few weeks'
idling on the Riviera, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Gisburn
had given up his painting. On reflection, it really was a tempting
problem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy--his fair sitters
had been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisburn had "dragged him
down." For Mrs. Gisburn--as such--had not existed till nearly a year
after Jack's resolve had been taken. It might be that he had married
her--since he liked his ease--because he didn't want to go on painting;
but it would have been hard to prove that he had given up his painting
because he had married her.

Of course, if she had not dragged him down, she had equ