Something in Monica’s voice prompted Jill to glance at her, still smiling, ecstatic with the surprise of the painting, not wanting, it seemed, the moment to end. “The artist must be local because the scene is only a few miles away—do you know, I hate to confess it, but I tried to paint those ruins myself, I tried and tried!—because it’s so poignant, so devastating, I mean the look of it. I’ve seen lithographs of the poor farm, it was built in the early 1800s and modeled after a famous English mental hospital, I’ve forgotten the name, I mean the construction of it—the architecture. So ugly!—massive—yet in its way noble—I can’t explain. But this watercolor captures it all—captures so much. And yet, you know, the implication is always—as it is here—it’s always—with real artists—as if no one tried. As if it just—happened!” Jill said with a despairing sort of gaiety. “Which marks the artist and sets him apart from people like us: for we must try. And try and try. . . .”

“I bought it quite cheaply,” Monica said. “They said they’d had it for years.”

“But art doesn’t age,” said Jill, frowning, “—whoever are these people?—they sound so ignorant! Which gallery did you get it in?—or was it an antique shop?”

Monica murmured that she really didn’t know; she’d forgotten.

“I wish I’d seen it first,” Jill said. Then, hearing her own words, she added, guiltily: “Of course, the point is, I didn’t—and you did.”

Yes, Monica murmured.

Molly was clearly restless, so, sighing, Jill set down her mug of coffee and prepared to leave. She hoped that Monica would drop by to visit her soon—any time. She and James had been so very sorry Monica hadn’t been able to come to dinner on Christmas Eve—but they quite understood—it was such a busy time of year.

In the doorway, winding her wool scarf around her head, Jill returned suddenly to the subject of the watercolor. The land along the Poor Farm Road was left uncultivated, she said, because the Flaxmans owned it—that is, Sheila Trask owned it. “Everyone else around here rents out land for farming, but she can’t be troubled, you know,” Jill said, looking searchingly at Monica. “She’s so absorbed in her work, evidently, she can’t take time to think about such pragmatic things . . . financial arrangements . . . like the rest of us. Isn’t she fortunate? And so gifted. . . .”

“Is she?” Monica said.

After the Starkies left Monica moved the watercolor from her living room upstairs, to her bedroom. A smaller space suited it better, clearly. And now it would not be so needlessly exposed.

3

Sheila Trask was, or was not, waiting for Monica to telephone.

But it made no difference in Monica’s life, in either case.