"Anything else?" asked Dereham, after a pause, in his usual nonchalant tone. "Yes; the companion to this. One I call 'Moor Calm,' the other 'Moor Storm.'" Griff uncovered a second canvas lying against the wall. This time the background was a swirling sea of heather-tips below; and above, lightning and tempest and wind-driven, scudding night-clouds. The naked figure of a man held the foreground--a man eye to eye with the lightning, shoulder to shoulder with the storm; on his lips sat determination, but grim laughter lay in his eyes. The whole smote one with a sense of fearless, Fate-defying nudity. Dereham shuddered a little as he looked--then shrugged his shoulders when he saw that Griff was watching him. "Very fine, my friend, for those who understand it. I don't, for my part; it makes me feel cold and wet through." "But I understand it!" interrupted Griff, giving a loose rein to his enthusiasm. "I never see the moor without thanking God that I took to painting instead of literature. The moor shifts her expression every hour, every minute: you can't stir without getting a fine, strong bit of canvas-work. Yet fools go wasting their time on waterfalls, and buttercup meadows, and milkmaids going kine-wards. Does it never occur to them that there is something worth painting, if they will only take the trouble to climb a few hundred feet to get it?" "Well, I dare say it will bring you _kudos_," said Dereham, with a yawn that was intended as an apology for certain twinges of enthusiasm discernible in his own person. "For my part, I find these moors of yours devilish healthy, and devilish dull. I'm frankly in love with houses, and warm fires, and theatres, and the rest of it. If I hadn't met you, I think not even the shooting would have compensated me for coming." "Like it or not, old chap," laughed Griff, "you will hear of me again when these pictures appear. Have another weed." "I daren't, in this temple of the rough, the savage, and the naked. You can't imagine primitive man sitting with a cigar-stump in his mouth. No, it shall be a pipe.--Lomax," he went on, after he had lit up, "how do you find time to paint? I thought you were farming all day long." "I only work when it suits me. My man is dependable enough, and he keeps things going. But farming puts me into condition, and that saves me from conceiving the flabby subjects which boomed me. I'm in the thick of it up here, too--right in the middle of human nature that isn't ashamed of its simpleness. Every day of my life I rub against good, sharp angles, and every day I thank the Lord that I am not planed down to a model human yet." "Lomax," put in the other, with an air of grave profundity, "don't begin thanking the Lord that you are a publican and sinner, or you may be turned into a Pharisee."