Sheila made an attempt, rather strained, Monica thought, to draw her into the conversation; to interest Halleron in her—in her as a professional woman, a woman of intelligence and taste; but clearly the focus of interest, the excited focus of interest, was Sheila Trask and Jake Halleron, their common—but surely not commonplace—past; the people (living, dead, moribund, “vanished”) they knew; the works of art, seriocomic or tragic adventures, anecdotal episodes, they shared. Scattered on the coffee table before them was a pile of snapshots Halleron had brought, through which they had been sorting before Monica’s arrival; earlier in the day Sheila had shown Halleron her new paintings and was now basking, or smarting, in the aftermath of his response. Which accounted in part for her bright, brittle, nervous, yet elated mood; her air of girlish coquetry; the shrill sound of her laughter and the sudden, abrupt, melancholy cast of her expression. Her glances at Monica—moist, darkly bright, shadowed—were indecipherable, and quite disturbing.

Are they lovers, Monica thought, suddenly frightened—have they been lovers?

Then, more calmly: It has nothing to do with me, in any case.

The visit lasted no more than an hour yet would be one of those queer undefined experiences—pockets, or vacuums, of experience—common to any life: inexplicable, unsettling because inexplicable, but too troubling to be dismissed. During the course of the hour Sheila drank a great deal but seemed rather more in control than she had been, of late; Halleron could have little idea of the stress she was enduring, the wild fluctuations of mood and temper. Their talk surprised Monica by being so relentlessly specific, even gossipy—they talked not of art but of artists and galleries (Halleron was a mine of droll little anecdotes, some of them quite nasty, all of them amusing: he forbade either Sheila or Monica to repeat a disturbing tale of the last days of Philip Guston, told to him in strictest confidence); and, in regard to Sheila’s work, exclusively of technique, “references” and “allusions” and “tricks” of which Halleron seemed generally to approve. Where Monica had seen beauty of a kind, indefinable, haunting, evanescent, where Monica had supposed she saw meaning, Halleron spoke of a canvas with a visible weave; a diluted pigment soaked into the canvas; staining, puddling, rubbing, blotting, brushing; the use of a turpentine spread; washes; areas of dried paint and “false space”—the influence (elegiac, yet perhaps rather too emphatic) of Hans Hofmann; and one or two other tricks, gimmicks, which, in his opinion, Sheila hadn’t quite mastered. And the hand—the heavy hand!—of Flaxman: that was still a factor, distracting to him, though not perhaps to anyone else.

He glanced at Monica, and winked.

As if inviting her to corroborate his remarks?—or to contradict?