“Well, you will let Michael Schwankovsky finish his fourth cup here, won’t you, Joan? Now he’s begun it? Do sit down, both of you. Ariel, please pass the sweets to Joan and Hugh. There’s cheese, Michael Schwankovsky, in that jar, if you like it on graham toast. Hugh, get a cup for yourself from the tray.” Hugh preferred to smoke,—but nothing less than a pipe this time, for he felt Joan’s strain and confusion; and his well-worn, smooth and beautiful meerschaum at least gave a superficial air of peace to the gathering. Joan sat looking over Grandam’s head to the western windows. She observed, with something like exasperation, that even out there, far, far in the western sky, the red-violet light of the clearing evening was turning the very heavens into a mere extension of Grandam’s apartment. In the smell of browning toast, the firelight, the laughter, Ariel’s silver slippers coming and going in Grandam’s hospitality, the smoke from Hugh’s meerschaum, and the shadows dancing on its bowl, she refused to take pleasure. But Schwankovsky would not let her stay out of it whether she felt at home or not. He sprang to his feet, seized her by the elbows, pulled her up, and walked her backwards, away from the fireplace into the center of Grandam’s room. “You haven’t looked at ‘Noon’!” he shouted. “My Ariel was right. It is the jewel of them all. I admit it. Clare didn’t go beyond that even in ‘The Shell.’ “But I wonder if it is well, my friend, that you are seeing the best first! To lead up to it gradually might put less strain upon one’s understanding of what the artist intends. What do you think of it? Speak! Say, my friend!” His excitement, as he watched Joan studying the picture through narrowed eyes, was childlike in its eager expectancy. But it was a full minute before she gave him any satisfaction. Then she merely said, with what appeared to be a quiet sincerity, “Yes. It is _good_. What do you suppose he used to get that tone in the white? Yet I don’t quite see the point of the introduction of the figure. I’m distressed for the unity, Michael.” “No, no, no, no. See! It is like this—” The big man was off on a technical exposition of a new, a more subtle idea of unity, as discovered and used by Gregory Clare. “As for the way he got that white—well, Charlie Frye has told me in the most particular detail how Clare mixed his paints,—but only God knows how he moved the brush to get such effects! “But you do not expand, Joan!” he halted his dissertation to expostulate. “You are not convinced?” Hugh was afraid that the Russian might burst into tears. “Oh, yes. I am convinced that here we have something really important!” Joan admitted.