"No, don't seem so. Can't sell them anyhow. I thought my 'East River' was about the best I had done, but nobody wants it. Cook calls it a 'Melancholy Monochrome,' and that other critic--I forget his name--says it lacks 'spontaneity,' whatever that is. I ought to have stayed at home and helped my Governor instead of roaming round the world deluding myself with the idea that I could paint. About everything I've tried has failed: Had to borrow the money to get me to Munich; took me three years to pay it back, doing pot-boilers; even painted signs one time. Been chasing these phantoms now for a good many years, but I haven't got anywhere. I'd rather paint than eat, but I've got to eat--that's the worst of it. A little encouragement, too, would help. I try not to mind what Cook says about my things, but it hurts all the same. And yet if he ever over-praised my work it would be just as offensive. What I want is somebody to come along and get underneath the paint and find something of myself and what I am trying to do with my brush. It may be monotonous to Cook; it isn't to me. I could crisp up my 'East River' with a lot of cheap color and a boat or two with figures in the foreground, but it was that vast silence of the morning that I was after, and the silvering quality of the dawn. Doesn't everybody see that? Some of them can't. Well, in she goes with the rest; you'll all have a fine bonfire when I'm gone. I'll keep out the one hanging over the lounge and maybe another back somewhere in that mausoleum of a closet. I'll give one to you, old man, if you'll promise to take care of it," and Mac took an unframed canvas from the wall and propped it up on a chair. There were dozens of others around it and so it had never attracted my attention. "Not much--just a garden wall and a bench--pretty black--too much bitumen, I guess," and he wet his finger and rubbed the canvas. I took the sketch in my hand and examined it carefully. It was dated "Lucerne," and signed with two initials, not Mac's. "Old sketch?" "Yes, about fifteen years ago." "Doesn't look like your work." "It isn't." "Who did it?" "A pupil of mine." "Girl?" Mac nodded, replaced the sketch on the wall and sank into his chair again. "Only pupil I ever had. She and her mother had spent the winter in Munich--that's where I met her." "It is signed 'Lucerne,'" I said. "Yes, I followed her there." "To teach?" "No; because I loved her." The announcement came so suddenly that for a moment I could not answer. He often gave me his confidence, and I thought I knew his life, but this was news to me. I had always suspected that some love affair had sweetened and mellowed his nature, but he always avoided the subject and I had, of course, never pressed my inquiries. If he was ready to tell me now I was willing to listen with open ears. "You loved her, Mac?" I said simply.