Ogilvy's dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and everybody turned toward him:
"Then," he said, slowly, "what is the matter with Neville?"
Somebody said: "He does convince you; it isn't that, is it?"
A voice replied: "Does he convince himself?"
"There is—there always has been something lacking in all that big, glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing—whatever it is," said Ogilvy, quietly. "Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too omniscient—"
"And we mortals can't stand that," commented Annan, laughing. "'Raus mit
Neville!' He paints joy and sorrow as though he'd never known either—"
And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled silence.
"That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work," said Gail, deliberately. "When he has passed through it and it has made his hand less steady, less omnipotent—"
"That's right. We can't love a man who has never endured what we have," said another. "No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with an unscarred soul. A little hell for his—and no living painter could stand beside him."
"Piffle," observed John Burleson.