“One man is killing the other man,” I said, aware of a distinct bepuzzlement of my own and of failure to explain.

“Why?” asked Sitka Charley.

“I do not know,” I confessed.

“That picture is all end,” he said. “It has no beginning.”

“It is life,” I said.

“Life has beginning,” he objected.

I was silenced for the moment, while his eyes wandered on to an adjoining decoration, a photographic reproduction of somebody’s “Leda and the Swan.”

“That picture,” he said, “has no beginning. It has no end. I do not understand pictures.”

“Look at that picture,” I commanded, pointing to a third decoration. “It means something. Tell me what it means to you.”

He studied it for several minutes.