completely sober and excessively critical. He examined the canvases
which Kirk had hauled from shelves and corners for his inspection. One
after another he gazed upon them in an increasingly significant
silence. When the last one was laid aside he delivered judgment.
'Golly!' he said.
Kirk flushed. It was not that he was not in complete agreement with the
verdict. Looking at these paintings, some of which he had in the old
days thought extremely good, he was forced to admit that 'Golly' was
the only possible criticism.
He had not seen them for a long time, and absence had enabled him to
correct first impressions. Moreover, something had happened to him,
causing him to detect flaws where he had seen only merits. Life had
sharpened his powers of judgment. He was a grown man looking at the
follies of his youth.
'Burn them!' said Mr. Penway, lighting a cigar with the air of one
restoring his tissues after a strenuous ordeal. 'Burn the lot. They're
awful. Darned amateur nightmares. They offend the eye. Cast them into a
burning fiery furnace.'
Kirk nodded. The criticism was just. It erred, if at all, on the side
of mildness. Certainly something had happened to him since he
perpetrated those daubs. He had developed. He saw things with new eyes.
'I guess I had better start right in again at the beginning,' he sad.
'Earlier than that,' amended Mr. Penway.
* * * * *
So Kirk settled down to a routine of hard work; and, so doing, drove
another blow at the wedge which was separating his life from Ruth's.
There were days now when they did not meet at all, and others when they
saw each other for a few short moments in which neither seemed to have
much to say.
Ruth had made a perfunctory protest against the new departure.
'Really,' she said, 'it does seem absurd for you to spend all your time
down at that old studio. It isn't as if you had to. But, of course, if
you want to......'
And she had gone on to speak of other subjects. It was plain to Kirk
that his absence scarcely affected her. She was still in the rapids,
and every day carried her farther away from him.
It did not hurt him now. A sort of apathy seemed to have fallen on him.
The old days became more and more remote. Sometimes he doubted whether
anything remained of her former love for him, and sometimes he wondered
if he still loved her. She was so different that it was almost as if
she were a stranger. Once they had had everything in common. Now it
seemed to him that they had nothing, not even Bill.
He did not brood upon it. He gave himself no time for that. He worked
doggedly on under the blasphemous but efficient guidance of Mr. Penway.
He was becoming a man with a fixed idea, the idea of making good.
He began to make headway. His beginnings were small, but practical. He
no longer sat down when the spirit moved him to dash off vague
masterpieces which might turn into something quite unexpected on the
road to completion; he snatched at anything definite that presented
