Still searching, he laughed outright to find on an upper shelf the selfsame palette that Anthony had so often bragged about, at the Club, and (to judge from its pristine appearance) had so seldom used, in the studio. It was a rather large palette, acquired at no small cost by Anthony, during his period of trying out dear Shorty Lasar’s theory, namely: that when seen on the dull brownish wood of the ordinary palette, any color, no matter how muddy, looks bright and pure, luring the painter to his ruin; whereas, when shown on a brilliant, untarnished surface, say that of pearl or of ivory, the same color is revealed at once in all its foulness. “Nothing like mother-of-pearl,” Jimmy would say, “for exposing the true soul of a gob of paint!” And Anthony’s Club-famous palette, which Maurice now held in his hand, had been inlaid with pearl from stem to stern, a splendor which had added somewhat to its weight. Price balanced it between thumb and fingers, a little patronizingly, perhaps, as may well happen when a man takes up another’s palette, especially a palette more famed in theory than in practice. Not that he wanted to quarrel with the tools he was lucky enough to find; anything in reason would do. As for the mahogany panels, he would gratefully use one of those, at a pinch. It had not the kind of surface he preferred, his way being to use a rather absorbent canvas, preparing the surface to suit the needs of the work in hand. But here again, Maurice was not hide-bound. Surface wasn’t the only thing; it would be a poor painter who would let a marvel-landscape like that go unpainted, merely because he hadn’t a fine new roll of canvas to slash into. He was glad to find, in that inexhaustible closet, half a dozen of those panels; baywood or cherry, perhaps, though his friend always called them mahogany. Running eager fingers over them, he found that the one he liked best for size and solidity, for shape and texture, had already been used, on one side; but that mattered not at all. He knew Anthony’s three-layered panels; both sides were good. On bringing the panel of his choice out into the full light, he was first dazzled and then puzzled by the painting on it. Was this really Anthony’s work? Theory-ridden as he was, Anthony had certainly painted queer stuff, at times. But Maurice could not insult his friend’s hospitality by taking this weird performance in earnest. Its style out-Jimmied Jimmy. Yet it seemed brilliantly familiar; it had Anthony mannerisms.