| OCR Text |
Show 3«A part of her life was over. I got her to show me all the stuff I had seen before in the portfolio, those western scenes and especially the horses, and asked her why she didn't pick it up again, that I thought she had talent. "It takes more than talent, /$+.' I have no compulsion to do it. Besides, if I really got setrious about landscapes like those, I'd have to go back and see them again, paint there. My life is here." "Jaint abstracts." "I'm not in£to abstracts. I don't see them; how could I paint them?" "Paint landscapes or figures or whatever around here. For practice." "Why, if I'm happy not doing them? There are enough painters." I stopped pushing her; it was her decision. I was sorry I couldn't say that my mistress was a painter but I had seen her courage, her honesty, her good sense. None of those qualities could I drop casually into a conversation but I knew they warmed the autumn and would keep winter at bay. Her incredible physical warmth was even more gratifying as the days got shorter and colder, more than compensation for summer's idyll, that warmth of hers which made my autumn burn gold and orange, aflame. I enrolled at an acting school that fall, located downtown. And, partly to have a change in reading and not to neglect my education, I started #id. Gibbon's Decline and Fall. I should have known better. |
