“Say, Maury, think it over! What do you take me for, anyway? Do you suppose I want to carry on a queer joint like this, always? It isn’t merely my commission I’m thinking of when I’m asking you for your best stuff! My littlest skirt will be growing up, and there’ll be others, perhaps. Pants, too,—who knows? I wouldn’t like to have him, and them, see me spend my days in a frisky, risky side-show like this!” His gesture included the emerald-green elephant, as yet unbought, and beginning to flake off a little at the tip of the trunk. “I like this art business—I like it fine. But I want to carry it on in a way a fellow like you would approve of, and respect, and be enthusiastic about!” “Do you know,” answered Maurice, reflectively, “I begin to think that’s just what you are doing, as fast as you can!” He spilled some cigar-ash on the rug, and ground it in carefully with his foot, always a sign of emotion in Price-of-Great-Pearls. And the two had parted, well pleased with each other and with themselves. Hence it was that Maurice, in reviewing the work of that good summer, had decided, Academician though he was, to send to the Court of New Departures his best-loved landscape. Farintosh was to have the rest. They were all of them good stuff, too; he knew that. But not one of them, either for his artist friends or for himself, surpassed in charm and amplitude that southern picture of Ascutney, painted with Anthony’s materials, too. At first blush, it seemed a high-keyed, ecstatic picture, but a second glance revealed a multitude of lovely, lively grays; dew-spangled or tear-touched, who could say? Maurice knew that he had never before put so much of himself into any picture. It was dyed-in-the-wool Price, by Jove it was! He told himself so, in a passion of certainty. He knew, he knew, that beyond anything he had ever before painted, it showed him at his best, intellectually and emotionally; it revealed the man, and whatever mastery he had over his life and times; and incidentally, his technique, too, a thing not to be despised in the midst of larger considerations. Yes, the pearl among his pictures! He smiled, remembering his nickname.