All the little paintings were different, yet each of them in some mysterious way was a record of her broken nights. Each of them had come to being while her mind returned to some dim hinterland, and found her nights, and brought them back. Swathes of color passionate against a brooding background; spirals of flame in space: parabolas of red and gold and green dragging a fever across darkling worlds of black and gray. In all of them was a phantasmagoria of design Cornelia had no name for: but could not wholly reject. They were herself. The diary of her passionate anguish. No one would ever see them. Whom did they hurt? She had joyous rest in looking at them, in letting herself out among their distances. She promised herself that she would always laugh at them: when she felt a little stronger and her fight was won, she promised herself to leave them and return to her Art. A thought came sudden from the outer world. “Why,” she cried, standing up, “it’s Thanksgiving Day! No wonder Giulio did not come.” She put away the sheets of her confessional. “I must have a walk. Goodness! I nearly forgot. People are coming to tea!” She had marketing to do. The stores would still be open in the morning. She trudged through the bright pink snow: she said to herself: “I wonder if I am mad making these mad pictures. They _are_ mad. They have no subjects or anything. Well, I don’t care. Supposing I _am_ mad?...” The pink snow danced lazy through blue air. The City was a great beast snoring with snout on the ground. She pondered. “It sometimes seems to me things are not really half so clear and concise as we artists make them. I wonder if we would be more concise painting these misty moods....” She saw how fluent and filmy a thing was the snowing City. People passing were strokes of smudge across the snow. “They aren’t really like people at all--noses and limbs and thoughts!” But she was at her shop. She was buying chocolate éclairs: very clear things, these, with particular prices. Her inspiration melted in the sticky air. Cornelia had no fingers to grasp these luminous moments fleeting across her. As she came back a little cavalcade of ragamuffins pranced and begged pennies. She gave each of them five cents. They danced and cavorted in the snow. Their faces were running with grease and paint. The boys wore women’s skirts tucked high under their armpits, feathers in vast broken derbies abandoned by their fathers. The girls were trim in trousers: their little buttocks pointed rakishly back under their flowing curls. “How like flowers they are, in the snow,” said Cornelia to herself. “And the great monster City with his snout snoring away. They’ll tickle him with their antics: he’ll shake himself and snarl and swallow them up.”