nd against
the next interview with Teevan. He did not want to hurt Sydenham. The
latter was roping his stool and easel together. He had been a little
amazed at his pupil's outburst, but he looked up with a smile entirely
placid.

"That's the way they all say it. You've caught the trick of art
criticism, my boy, if you've caught nothing else."

Ewing saw that he was laughed at. There was a cool little flash to his
retort.

"I can make that into a real cow for you, if you like, after we get
home."

But the old man only chuckled at him, making him regret that he had ever
so little curbed his criticism. He had an impulse to fight, a craving
to arouse resistance. But he saw that Sydenham was no target for him,
save in a sort of subcaliber practice. He hoped this novel combativeness
would not wither under the first glance of Teevan's sharp little eyes.

It was dusk when they reached the city, and Ewing went to the Monastery
to dine. He had long shunned the place, for the men there talked of
things they had done or were doing, and they had made him, without
meaning to, feel "out of it," as he told himself. For he, if he talked,
could tell only of wonders he meant to do, and, lacking an audience
composed of Teevans, he was shrewd enough to see that these would sound
too wonderful and the future too distantly vague.

He had always been glad, however, of his drawing on the east wall. They
could not believe him wholly lacking after that, nor refuse him
fellowship if he sought it. He avoided the crowd when he entered the
room--the men he knew best were at a long table on the rear veranda just
outside the open windows--and chose a small table opposite his drawing.
He had thought of it often during the afternoon while he harangued
Teevan in imagination. It had occurred to him that this was the only
thing he had really done since coming to New York, and he had been
seized with a longing to look at it again, to prove to his own eyes that
the thing which was really his own--not Corot's nor Millet's nor even
Sydenham's--was not an inconsiderable thing, not a thing he need despair
of building on.

As he ate, his eyes eagerly retraced the lines. After the soup he had to
look down to his plate to know if his fork brought him fish or flesh.
The sketch delighted him. He was surprised that he had been able to do
it. He began to doubt his present mastery of the technique it
displayed, fearing he had wandered too long in the Teevan-pres