The Artist’S Secret

There was an artist once, and he painted a picture. Other artists had

colours richer and rarer, and painted more notable pictures. He painted

his with one colour, there was a wonderful red glow on it; and the

people went up and down, saying, “We like the picture, we like the

glow.”

The other artists came and said, “Where does he get his colour from?”

They asked him; and he smiled and said, “I cannot tell you”; and worked

on with his head bent low.

And one went to the far East and bought costly pigments, and made a rare

colour and painted, but after a time the picture faded. Another read in

the old books, and made a colour rich and rare, but when he had put it

on the picture it was dead.

But the artist painted on. Always the work got redder and redder, and

the artist grew whiter and whiter. At last one day they found him dead

before his picture, and they took him up to bury him. The other men

looked about in all the pots and crucibles, but they found nothing they

had not.

And when they undressed him to put his grave-clothes on him, they found

above his left breast the mark of a wound--it was an old, old wound,

that must have been there all his life, for the edges were old and

hardened; but Death, who seals all things, had drawn the edges together,

and closed it up.

And they buried him. And still the people went about saying, “Where did

he find his colour from?”

And it came to pass that after a while the artist was forgotten--but the

work lived.

St. Leonards-on-Sea.