"The whole thing's just a bluff!" interrupted the younger man, decidedly. "It's not what you told us about at all--and it's not good, anyway. It looks as if a tornado had struck it! You said it was to be late afternoon--it's nearer midnight, as far as I can see! What's that tree lying around for?" His tone was abusive, but a genuine concern and surprise was underneath it. He looked furtively at his older friend behind Willard's back. The other shook his head expressively. Willard bit his lip. "I only wanted to try--it won't necessarily stay that way," he explained. He wished he cared more for what they said. He wished they did not bore him so unspeakably. More than all, he wished they would go. The younger one whistled softly. "Pretty late in the day to be making up your mind, I should say," he remarked. "When's it going to dry in? Morris has been working like a horse on his for six weeks. He's coming on, too--splendid colour!" Willard lit a cigarette. "Damn Morris!" he said casually. The older man drew on his glove and turned to go. "Oh, certainly!" he replied cheerfully. "By all means! No, we can't stay--we only dropped in. We just thought we'd see how you were getting along. If I were you, Will, I'd make up my mind about that intoxicated tree and set it up straight--good-bye!" They went out cheerfully enough, but he knew they were disappointed and hurt--they had expected so much from that picture. And he wished he cared more. He looked at it critically. Of course it was bad, but how could they tell what he had been doing? It was the plan of months changed utterly in three hours. The result was ridiculous, but he needed it no longer--he knew what he wanted now, what he had been fighting against all these days. He would paint it if he could--and till he could. The insistent artist-passion to express even bunglingly something of the unendurable beauty of that strange night was on him, and before the echo of his guests' departure had died away he was working as he had never worked before, the old picture lying unnoticed in the corner where he had thrown it. He needed no models, he did not use his studies. Was it not printed on his brain, was it not etched into his heart, that weird vision of the storm, with the floating fairy creature that hardly touched the earth? Was there a lovely curve in all her melting postures, which slipped like water circles into new shapes, that he did not know? That haunting, elf-like look, that ineffably exquisite _abandon_, had he not studied it greedily then in the wood, and later, in his restless dreams? The trees were sentient, the bushes put out clasping fingers to detain him, the wind shrieked out its angry soul at him; and she, the white wonder with her floating wisps of stinging hair, had joined with them to mock at him, the startled witness of that mad revel of all the elements. He knew all this--he was drunk with it: could he paint it? Or would people see only a strange-eyed girl dancing in a wood?