'It had nothing to do with the clothes you wore. It was a little quiet, sedate air.'

'I wasn't in good spirits when I came down here.'

'No, you weren't. I thought you might be a bore.'

'But I haven't been that, have I?'

'No, I'm damned if you're that.'

'But what a charming sketch you're making. You take that ordinary common grey from the palette, and it becomes beautiful. If I were to take the very same tint, and put it on the paper, it would be mud.'

Morton placed his sketch against a rock, and surveyed it from a little distance. 'I don't call it bad, do you? I think I've got the sensation of the lonely lake. But the effect changes so rapidly. Those clouds are quite different from what they were just now. I never saw a finer sky, it is wonderful. It is splendid as a battle'…

'Write underneath it, "That night the sky was like a battle."'

'No, it would do for my sketch.'

'You think the suggestion would overpower the reality…. But it is a charming sketch. It will remind me of a charming day, of a very happy day.'