lain-speaking?" Ludlow said, putting his picture where
it could be seen best. "I was going to accuse you of flattery."

"Well, you had better ponder the weighty truths I have let fall. I
don't go round dropping them on everybody's toes."

"Probably there are not enough of them," Ludlow suggested.

"Oh, yes, there are." Wetmore waited till Ludlow should say he was
ready to have him look at his picture. "The fact is, I've been giving a
good deal of attention to your case, lately. You're not simple enough,
and you've had the wrong training. You would naturally like to paint
the literature of a thing, and let it go at that. But you've studied in
France, where they know better, and you can't bring yourself to do it.
Your nature and your school are at odds. You ought to have studied in
England. They don't know how to paint there, but they've brought
fiction in color to the highest point, and they're not ashamed of it."

"Perhaps you've boon theorizing, too," said Ludlow, stepping aside from
his picture.

"Not on canvas," Wetmore returned. He put himself in the place Ludlow
had just left. "Hello!" he began, but after a glance at Ludlow he went
on, with the effect of having checked himself, to speak carefully and
guardedly of the work in detail. His specific criticism was as gentle
and diffident as his general censure of Ludlow was blunt and outright.
It was given mostly in questions, and in recognitions of intention.

"Well, the sum of it is," said Ludlow at last, "you see it's a
failure."

Wetmore shrugged, as if this were something Ludlow ought not to have
asked. He went back to Cornelia's sketches, and looked at them one
after another. "That girl knows what she's about, or what she wants to
do, and she goes for it every time. She _has_ got talent. Whether she's
got enough to stand the training! That's the great difference, after
all. Lots of people have talent; that's the gift. The question is
whether one has it in paying quantity, or enough of it to amount to
anything after the digging and refining. I should say that girl had,
but very likely I might be mistaken."

Ludlow joined in the examination of the sketches. He put his hand on
the weak points as well as on the strong ones; he enjoyed with Wetmore
the places where her artlessness had frankly offered itself instead of
her art. There was something ingenuous and honest in it all that made
it all charming.

"Yes, I think she can do it," said Wetmore, "if she wan