Botts, who had the next studio to Dalny, solved the mystery.
"He's crazy over a color scheme; gone daft on purples and yellows. I haven't seen it—nobody has except his old sister. He keeps it covered up, but he's got a 50X60 that he's worked on for years. Claims to have discovered a palette that will make a man use smoked glass when his picture is hung on the line. That's why he's called 'Old Sunshine.'"
Dalny made no reply, none that would encourage Botts in his flippant view of the old painter. He himself had been studying that same problem all his life; furthermore, he had always believed that sooner or later some magician would produce three tones—with harmonies so exact that a canvas would radiate light like a prism.
The next day he kept his studio-door open and his ear unbuttoned, and when the old man's steps approached his door on his return from his morning walk—the only hour he ever went out—Dalny threw it wide and stepped in front of him.
"Don't mind coming in, do you?" Dalny laughed. "I've struck a snag in a bit of drapery and can't get anything out of it. I thought you might help—" And before the old fellow could realize where he was, Dalny had him in a chair before his canvas.
"I'm not a figure-painter," the old man said, simply.
"That don't make any difference. Tell me what's the matter with that shadow—it's lumpy and flat," and Dalny pointed to a fold of velvet lying across a sofa, on which was seated the portrait of a stout woman—one of Dalny's pot-boilers—the wife of a rich brewer who wanted a picture at a poor price—one which afterward made Dalny's reputation, so masterful was the brushwork. The old Studio Building was full of just such customers, but not of such painters.
"It's of the old school," said the painter. "I could only criticise it in one way, and that might offend you."
"Go on—what is the matter with it?"