“No.”
“I have. Some country, America. They’ve pinched our best Torrington, curse them ... not that that took me there. One afternoon, though, I happened to be looking for it in a moldy, one-horse museum just off Washington Square—I forget the name of it—when I walked straight into the arms of dear old Jim Stanning who had actually come all the way from Europe on purpose to gaze at it.”
Sally emitted becoming surprise.
“If you read that in a novel you’d say it was the sort of thing that doesn’t happen. But it did happen. Fancy old Jim coming all those miles by flood and field to look at a strip of canvas not as big as that drawing board. ‘The Valley of the Sharrow on an afternoon in July.’ By the way, did you ever happen to meet him?”
Sally had never met Stanning the painter.
“One of the whitest men that ever lived. Lies out there. A great chap, Jim Stanning. Another Torrington almost for a certainty ... although he doubted himself, whether he was big enough to fight his own success. See what he meant?”
It thrilled him a little when he realized that she did.
For an instant the extinguished eyes seemed to well with light. “That picture of his, ‘As the Leaves of the Tree,’ carries technique to a point that makes one dizzy. Some say technique doesn’t matter, but there’s nothing permanent without it.” He sighed heavily. “Of course the undaunted soul of man has to shine through it. And that’s just what Jim Stanning was—an undaunted soul. Dead at thirty-nine. We shan’t realize ... if we ever realize ... however....”
Overcome by his thoughts for a moment, he could not go on. Sally sat breathing hard.