The conversation spread to a less technical discussion as the group was joined by the professor of rhetoric, an ambitious young man with an insatiable craving for sophistication, who felt himself for once entirely in his element in the crowd of celebrities.  “It’s incredibly good luck that our little two-for-a-cent college should have so fine a thing,” he said knowingly.  “I’ve been wondering how such an old skinflint as Gridley ever got the money loose to have his portrait done by—­”

A laugh went around the group at the idea.  “It was Mackintosh, the sugar king, who put up for it.  He’s a great Gridleyite, and persuaded him to sit.”

“Persuade a man to sit to Falleres!” The rhetoric professor was outraged at the idea.

“Yes, so they say.  The professor was dead against it from the first.  Falleres himself had to beg him to sit.  Falleres said he felt a real inspiration at the sight of the old fellow ... knew he could make a good thing out of him.  He was a good subject!”

The little group turned and stared appraisingly at the portrait hanging so close to them that it seemed another living being in their midst.  The rhetoric professor was asked what kind of a man the philosopher had been personally, and answered briskly:  “Oh, nobody knew him personally ... the silent old codger.  He was a dry-as-dust, bloodless, secular monk—­”

He was interrupted by a laugh from the art-critic, whose eyes were still on the portrait.

“Excuse me for my cynical mirth,” he said, “but I must say he doesn’t look it.  I was prepared for any characterization but that.  He looks like a powerful son of the Renaissance, who might have lived in that one little vacation of the soul after medievalism stopped hag-riding us, and before the modern conscience got its claws on us.  And you say he was a blue-nosed Puritan!”

The professor of rhetoric looked an uneasy fear that he was being ridiculed.  “I only repeated the village notion of him,” he said airily.  “He may have been anything.  All I know is that he was as secretive as a clam, and about as interesting personally.”

“Look at the picture,” said the critic, still laughing; “you’ll know all about him!”

The professor of rhetoric nodded.  “You’re right, he doesn’t look much like my character of him.  I never seem to have had a good, square look at him before.  I’ve heard several people say the same thing, that they seemed to understand him better from the portrait than from his living face.  There was something about his eyes that kept you from thinking of anything but what he was saying.”

The critic agreed.  “The eyes are wonderful ... ruthless in their power ... fires of hell.”  He laughed a deprecating apology for his overemphatic metaphor and suggested:  “It’s possible that there was more to the professorial life than met the eye.  Had he a wife?”

“No; it was always a joke in the village that he would never look at a woman.”