In fresh outrage, he yelled aloud, broke the top window glass with the chair, and banged away at the boards that had been nailed up outside. Even the noise he made sounded satisfying. “Serves them right,” he thought, enjoying the onrush of energy; grinning as the light came splashing through the room.

He heard the pounding footsteps rush up the stairs, and in a moment Jonathan came in, yelling, when he saw the damage. Broken glass was all over the floor. Jonathan lunged at Josef, cursing. “The glass. The fine, expensive glass,” he kept shouting.

“I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay. I can’t work in that miserable light,” Josef yelled, fighting him off. Jonathan was so shocked that finally he just stood aside, staring at the glass.

“I warned you,” he said, this time in a desperate quiet voice. “This time you’ve gone too far.”

Josef turned back to his painting. “I’ll pay for the glass,” he shouted again, wearily. “I told you I needed decent light. Before winter, I’ll sell these for good prices, and you’ll have your precious windows back. Now let me work.”

“You’re a crazy man. Crazy. Wait till my father gets back from the fields. We’re not going to get any glass for your windows ever again—“

“Good,” Josef said. He laughed out loud and went back to work, leaving Jonathan to sputter and rage until finally he left, slamming the door behind him.

When Jonathan was gone, Josef left the easel, danced in the sunlight that came through the open windows, twirling clumsily around in circles like a circus bear. Then he returned to his canvas. All he cared about now were his paintings. He’d never been so inspired in his life, for any period of time. To work at such a pitch! When you had inspiration, you didn’t need discipline, he thought gleefully; or at least inspiration had its own built-in discipline.

His paintings came like magic, out of nowhere, or out of a somewhere of dreams or imagination.

The afternoon went so quickly that Josef thought only a few moments had passed when Jonathan returned with his father. Without paying too much attention, Josef was aware of the annoying noise in the hall, the footsteps again; and then Jonathan and Elgren were in the room. The old man gasped, and Jonathan shouted with triumphant spite.

Josef just turned around and looked at them with all the fierceness he could muster. “I warned you that I needed light. I pleaded, but would you take down the, boards? No, so it’s your fault, for being so stupid—”

“I told you. He’s crazy,” Jonathan said, with some awe.

Elgren stood there, round, fat, and serious. “There’s something here we don’t understand,” he said, slowly. “Men just don’t act like that; not ordinary men.”

“That’s what I mean! He’s—”