He had not seen them for a long time, and absence had enabled him to correct first impressions. Moreover, something had happened to him, causing him to detect flaws where he had seen only merits. Life had sharpened his powers of judgment. He was a grown man looking at the follies of his youth.
“Burn them!” said Mr. Penway, lighting a cigar with the air of one restoring his tissues after a strenuous ordeal. “Burn the lot. They’re awful. Darned amateur nightmares. They offend the eye. Cast them into a burning fiery furnace.”
Kirk nodded. The criticism was just. It erred, if at all, on the side of mildness. Certainly something had happened to him since he perpetrated those daubs. He had developed. He saw things with new eyes.
“I guess I had better start right in again at the beginning,” he said.
“Earlier than that,” amended Mr. Penway.
So Kirk settled down to a routine of hard work; and, so doing, drove another blow at the wedge which was separating his life from Ruth’s. There were days now when they did not meet at all, and others when they saw each other for a few short moments in which neither seemed to have much to say.
Ruth had made a perfunctory protest against the new departure.
“Really,” she said, “it does seem absurd for you to spend all your time down at that old studio. It isn’t as if you had to. But, of course, if you want to——”
And she had gone on to speak of other subjects. It was plain to Kirk that his absence scarcely affected her. She was still in the rapids, and every day carried her farther away from him.