"Ah!" he said…. "Well, it's about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?"
"No," I said.
"I thought it wouldn't," he observed. "But I haven't touched it,
Pudgie—"
So I stayed the evening there.
But you must not think he was always doing that thing—whatever it was—to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of release (I don't know how else to put it) … like when, on one of these muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything's melancholy, the wind freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I'm trying to take it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the time I found out that he did that too, and knew when he was doing it.
I'd gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be—remembered I'd thought so—though it didn't annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I'd lost my fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that's horrible, to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.
Well, he'd been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was time I got it finished; I thought I'd better set about it at once; and I sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I'd just come out of a sleep. And, looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first—all misshapen and out of drawing.
The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if somebody had pulled me back.
Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like that; so, without looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, "Don't, Benlian!"
Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind me.