Monica took away the watercolor as if she feared her friend’s simple presence might do injury to it. She spent some minutes hunting down a suitable frame, feeling wonderfully triumphant, elated. Had she been angling to be given the painting, after all?—had it all been some sort of game, a pretense, not only her own high moral tone but Sheila’s initial contempt? But no—Sheila had come close to snatching the watercolor out of her fingers and tearing it in two. But yes—that would have been part of the game, that violence. And Monica’s scream of protest.

Afterward she said: “But Sheila, it isn’t fair—what can I give you in return? I don’t have anything of value—I don’t have anything you want.”

The remark hung awkwardly between them. Monica had spoken without thinking—warmly, impetuously, uncharacteristically—and there was nothing Sheila could say. Yet she couldn’t remain silent because her silence would be an insult. So she murmured, finally, embarrassed: “Friendship isn’t a matter of barter, is it?”

6

The only eccentric thing about her,” Monica said stiffly, the next time she was asked about Sheila Trask, “—is her generosity. I’ve never known anyone like her.”

7

Ariadne’s thread: the labyrinth as a state of mind, a region of the soul: heroic effort without any Hero at its center. (“This is only about Ariadne’s thread, this has nothing to do with Theseus,” Sheila said angrily.)

Monica stared, Monica stared hard, but the shifting angles and planes of paint, the subtle gradations of color, conformed to a structural grid she could not quite understand. She felt its logic—its inner sense. Or told herself she did.

But one day she made a mistake. A real blunder. Speaking warmly and effusively, chattering away as, in the past, Sheila had seemed to like her to chatter, she happened to say, “Why don’t you stop right at this point, don’t do another thing”—indicating a triptych on which Sheila had been working for the past several days. And Sheila had gone white with rage. She had barely been able to speak.

Monica sensed her tactlessness—her frank stupidity—at once; and hurriedly backed down. Of course Sheila knew what she was doing, what she wanted, Monica knew nothing, Monica was being intrusive and idiotic and was very, very sorry.

Afterward she asked Sheila shyly whether she had really been so angry as she’d appeared.

Sheila said: “Don’t ever tempt me. Don’t. Don’t.”