es and snow, in terms
of unreality. You over-idealize. I suppose it's your eternal need of
illusion. We've spoken of that before."

"I'm not a photographer!" blazed Kenny. "Any camera will give you
realistic detail. Artistic too. What else? Go on, Garry. I'm
calloused to the hearing of anything. I merely thank God you've had no
newspaper training."

"Most of the older painters," Garry said with reluctance, "seem to feel
that--well, there's too colorful a dominance of self in your work.
Your personality always overshadows. You've an extraordinary fluency
with color, a deft assurance, a brilliancy that leaves one rather
breathless and incredulous, but what you do is autocratically,
unforgettably--almost unforgivably--you!"

"Art," explained Kenny loftily, "is reality plus personality. And
personalities are variously vivid and anaemic. Unreal, over-idealized,
too colorful a dominance of self and personality overshadows," he
summarized after an interval of silence. "And in the face of
that--success. I am successful?"

"Undeniably."

"Even Hazleton, with his sordid gangs of Eastsiders nudging each other
on a dirty bench, can't deny it," bristled Kenny.

He had divided the honors of more than one exhibition with Hazleton and
admired and resented him impartially.

"It has been said," said Garry, ruffled by his air of triumph, "that
you paint down subtly to the popular fancy where you might paint up to
your own ideals."

The barb went home. Kenny flushed.

"Your work," added Garry, "lacks the force and depth of sincerity.
Even in Brian's dreadful East River sunset over there, there's a
quality you lack, an eagerness for reality and truth and life as it is.
Brian has painted poorly what he saw but he painted boats for ragged
sailors. Real boats. You've painted brilliantly, in the pine picture
for instance, what you wanted to see, a dark forest for mystic folk to
dance in when the moonlight lies upon the snow."

"And what," inquired Kenny with a shade of sarcasm, "was the final
verdict of the grill jury when all the evidence was in?"

"Remember old Dirk, Kenny? He said that the fullness of life came
through--sacrifice. That all things, good and permanent and true, come
only out of suffering; that men pay for their dreams with pain." He
let the full import of that drive home. "The verdict was, that if
you'd forget your public and look for truth, paint with restraint and
less brilliant illusory a