"Very well. Are you very tired? Your voice sounds tired." "I'll be all right now I am with you. Mr. Sivwright asked me to go to the Merlin's Cave to-night. He has to shut it up. I thought I wouldn't go, but I want to go, if you will come with me." "It might cheer us up, and you love dancing." They both thought of the night when he had danced with Jessie Petrie. "I'm painting a picture of a Jewish market. I want you to see it." "I'm glad you've gone back. I'm sure it is right." "What are you doing?" It was the first time he had asked after her work and a glow of happiness overcame her. "Oh! I . . . I'm doing a landscape--just a road running up a hill with some houses on top." "Like Rousseau. He was good at roads." "Mine's just painting. It isn't abstract." "You can't paint without being abstract," he said irritably. "Even Academicians can't really imitate, but they abstract without using their brains. You can't really copy nature, so what's the good of trying?" "You can suggest." "Then it's a sketch and not a picture." "Perhaps mine is only a sketch," she said rather forlornly, because she had been rather hopeful of her work. They went back to his studio, where he showed her his studies and drawings for the new picture. She saw that he was working again with his old love of his craft. They dined at the Pot-au-Feu, and had it all to themselves because the weather was so bad. There were only the goggle-eyed man in the corner with his green evening paper and Madame Feydeau and Gustave, the waiter. Over the dinner Mendel waxed very gay and gave her a very comic description of the scene when he had gone to his family to confess his failure. He had a wonderful power of making them comic without laughing at them. "They are wonderful people," he said. "They know what is sense and what is nonsense. If you gave them the biggest problem in the world they would know what was true in it and what was false. They are always right about politics and public men. But when it comes to art, they are hopeless." "But they believe in you." "Because I belong to them. They believe in themselves. . . . My mother was quite sound about Logan. She said it could not go on. I thought it was for ever. I've been thinking about Logan. He could never be himself. He was always wanting to be something--something big. I thought he was big for a long time. But he's just a man. I don't think Cézanne was ever anything but just a man. It makes one think, doesn't it? All these people who are written about as though they were something terrific, all trying to be something more than they are--just men. And then a quiet little man comes along and he is bigger than the lot of them, because he has never tried to blow himself out, but has given himself room to grow."