He had letters from Mitchell, but did not answer them, and at last “the schoolboy,” as Golda called him, turned up, gay and smiling and rather elated.
“I’ve discovered a great man,” he said with the awkward, jerky gesture he used in his more eloquent moments. “Absolutely a great man. Reminds me of Napoleon. Wonderful head, wonderful! His name is Logan—James Logan—and he wants to know you. He is a painter, and absolutely independent. He comes from the North—Liverpool or one of those places. I haven’t seen his work, but I met him at the Pot-au-Feu the other night. He asked me if I was not a friend of yours, as he thought he had seen me with you. He said: ‘Kühler is the only painter of genius we have.’ I spent the evening with him. I never heard such talk. It made the old Detmold seem like a girls’ school. . . . Hallo! Still-life again? What a rum old stick you are for never going outside your four walls!”
“What I paint is inside me, not outside,” said Mendel, trembling with rage at Mitchell looking at his work before he had offered to show it.
“Will you come and see Logan?”
“No. I am sick of painters. I want to know decent people.”
“But I promised I would bring you, and he admires your work. He is poor too, as poor as you are.”
“Can’t he sell?”
“It isn’t that so much as that he doesn’t try. He says he had almost despaired of English painting until he saw your work.”
“How old is he?”
“A good deal older than us. Twenty-six, I should think.”