Morrison sat very meekly while he talked. She hung her head and twitched her fingers nervously. She was elated by his passion, but she too had her dreams and was not going to surrender them. His strength had given her confidence in them and in herself, and she was filled with a teasing spirit. "Jews aren't the only people who are solid," she said. "You see men in buses and trains whom an earthquake wouldn't move, and I'm sure, if an earthquake happened, my mother would be left where she was, reading the Bible." Mendel replied:-- "In a thousand years my mother will be just as she is now." Morrison stared at him and began to wonder if he was not a little mad. He added simply:-- "I feel like that." And she was relieved and thought he was the only sane person she had ever met in her life. "Will you let me come again?" she asked. "I am going to paint you," he said; "I am going to paint you as you are. You won't like it." "I shall if you make me solid," she answered. "And you need flowers in this dark room. You must let me send you some." BOOK TWO BOHEMIA I THE POT-AU-FEU AT the exhibition, the portrait of Golda created no small stir. The critics, who, since Whistler, had been chary of denouncing new-comers, had swung to the opposite extravagance and were excessively eager to discover new masters. The youth of this Kühler made him fair game, for it supplied them with a proviso. They could hail his talent as that of a prodigy without committing themselves. "The portrait of the artist's mother," wrote one of them, "has all the essentials of great art, as the early compositions of Mozart had all the essentials of great music. Here is real achievement, a work of art instinct with racial feeling, and therefore of true originality. No trace here of Parisian experiments. This picture is in the direct line from Holbein and Dürer." Mendel took this to mean that he was as good as Holbein and Dürer, and accepted it not as praise but as a statement of fact. The picture was bought by a well-known connoisseur, who wrote that he was proud to have such a picture in his collection. "Now," thought the proud painter, "my career has really begun." For once in a way he regarded his success with his father's eyes and much as Moscowitsch would have regarded the successful coup in business for which he was always vainly striving. The hectic gambling spirit introduced by Hetty Finch had disappeared, and though he still devoted his leisure to Mitchell, their adventurousness was tempered by the tantalization of the "top-knots," Morrison and Clowes. To counteract the disturbing effect of their coolness, Mendel became very Jewish and hugged his success, gloating over it rather like a cat over a stolen piece of fish.