Sometimes Amory wondered whether these daring and illuminating talks with Cosimo were altogether a good thing for her art. They sometimes seemed to enlarge her ideas _too_ much. It was difficult, with a common brush and an ordinary canvas and a paint-box like anybody else's, to express the true philosophical meaning of the heart of things as Cosimo sometimes set that meaning forth; or rather, she could explain what she meant, but could not always make it explain itself. She expressed this doubt to Cosimo now, and found him quite extraordinarily full of help. "I know," he said thoughtfully. "It's hard, but it's what you've got to do, Amory. It's your job. Fundamental brainwork, as Rossetti said. The old traditions are _epuisées_--worn out; in making the new one you must say to yourself, 'Is this that I am doing merely a repetition, or does it belong to the age that has--well, say, wireless telegraphy?' I don't mean that you've got to muddle yourself, of course; that's the other danger: like Scylla and Charybdis; there are always two dangers, underdoing and overdoing; it's a Law. What I mean is that your art must be _the_ thing. See what I mean? Break fresh ground. Do something new. Say to yourself 'I'm going to do something new.' That's what the Pre-Raphaelites did, and look at Ford Madox Brown! As I say, it's the swing of the pendulum; action and re----(Hallo, here's Mrs. 'Ill--listen to her cough).... What a dreadful cold you have, Mrs. 'Ill!" And they chuckled for a quarter of an hour over Mrs. 'Ill's comical confusion. That afternoon they had one of their jolliest chats about Heredity. Amory wished she had Galton by her so that she could show Cosimo what she really meant, but Galton, in that topsy-turvy, was not to be laid hands on. Cosimo rested on his broom from time to time to listen, fastened his coffee-brown eyes earnestly on her face, and said that she ought to paint a picture, not necessarily to be called "Heredity," but to have something of Galton's meaning and spirit about it. "Express him in a different medium, if you understand me," he said.... Then he finished his walls, and they washed their begrimed hands and faces together over a bucket and went out to tea. Mrs. 'Ill and Jellies were left to sweep up and to make all ready for Cosimo to distemper the walls and stain the floor to-morrow. They dined, talking ever the more rapidly and brightly as the hours wore on; and Amory went as reluctantly back to Glenerne that night as if she had been going from a glorious liberty to a prison.