“All?”
“I told her I was going to begin all over again.”
Claudia’s heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly.
“But the panels—?”
“That’s all right too. I told her about the panels,” he reassured her.
“You told her—?”
“That I can’t paint them now. She doesn’t understand, of course; but she’s the best little woman and she trusts me.”
She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. “But that isn’t all,” she wailed. “It doesn’t matter how much you’ve explained to her. It doesn’t do away with the fact that we’re living on those panels!”
“Living on them?”
“On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn’t that what brought us here? And—if you mean to do as you say—to begin all over again—how in the world are we ever to pay her back?”