Yes,
it was I who started Grindle: I told Mrs. Stroud he was the 'coming'
man, and she told somebody else, and so it got to be true. . . . And
he painted Stroud without wincing; and she hung the picture among
her husband's things. . . ."
He flung himself down in the arm-chair near mine, laid back his
head, and clasping his arms beneath it, looked up at the picture
above the chimney-piece.
"I like to fancy that Stroud himself would have given it to me, if
he'd been able to say what he thought that day."
And, in answer to a question I put half-mechanically--"Begin again?"
he flashed out. "When the one thing that brings me anywhere near him
is that I knew enough to leave off?"
He stood up and laid his hand on my shoulder with a laugh. "Only the
irony of it is that I _am_ still painting--since Grindle's doing it
for me! The Strouds stand alone, and happen once--but there's no
exterminating our kind of art."
THE POT-BOILER
I
The studio faced north, looking out over a dismal reach of roofs and
chimneys, and rusty fire-escapes hung with heterogeneous garments.
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