For one thing, the show was considered a success. Even (in the words of one of the gallery assistants, with whom Monica spoke on the phone) a “great success.”

One of the well-to-do collectors who had bought Flaxman’s work was now interested in acquiring major pieces by Sheila Trask; which fact, not kept entirely confidential, had the agreeable result of triggering “interest” among other collectors. And there were representatives of private galleries, and of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney, and the Guggenheim, and . . .

But Sheila seemed scarcely to be interested. She told Monica that her show was a success because the paintings obviously hadn’t been priced high enough: if they had been, perhaps none would have sold.

Sheila was agreeing to do interviews and then canceling them at the last minute. It took four hours for her to be photographed for a feature in Vogue—the woman was so restless, so euphoric, she simply couldn’t sit still. Her very hair crackled about her face as if with electricity but she wasn’t thinking of her show, her success, the sudden attention being paid to her, she was thinking of a new project, her next project.

Day and night were queerly and wonderfully commingled, as ideas, impressions, images bombarded her. She was dreaming, she said, with her eyes open: could anything be more exquisite! These were visual ideas, contentless forms, motion, wave-motion, hairline factures as of (for instance) great blocks of ice, fractures radiating in several directions at once, perhaps even in several dimensions (“Is time a dimension?” Sheila asked) at once. Ah, it was nothing she could explain! Nothing that made any sense!

She wanted, she said suddenly, to fly to South America in a few weeks. From there she would go by boat to Antarctica: but she intended to go alone.

Well—as it developed, perhaps not entirely alone.

For there was the matter suddenly of Peck.

Twenty-five-year-old Peck who came out to Edgemont for a few days, Peck who was tall, very lean, lanky, silent, appearing sullen though in truth (as Sheila insisted) he was quite good-natured, once you came to know him. By coincidence Peck shared Sheila’s interest in Antarctica. In Peck it was very nearly an obsession, he wanted to paint and paint and paint ice floes, ice mountains, air scintillating with vapor, he knew what he wanted but (as Sheila said) he wasn’t in a financial position to get what he wanted, not yet. He’d had several group exhibits, two one-man shows, SoHo primarily, his things had sold modestly and had been well reviewed, though not widely reviewed, he was at the very start of what Sheila knew to be an extraordinary career, he quite astonished her with his eye, his painterly wit, a certain clairvoyance. . . . Peck is the real thing, Sheila said, her eyes narrowed in an odd rapturous resentful way, he’s just a kid and he’s the real thing. Shit!