JOE

Here’s your coat, Mr. Wentworth.

MR. WENTWORTH

Thank you.  Thank you for the delicious tea, Silvia.  If I weren’t leaving town so soon....  Good night.

SYLVIA

Good night.  The stairs are rather dark.... (He goes out)

JOE

Damn!

SYLVIA

Yes, I know, Joe.  It’s discouraging....

JOE

Discouraging?  It’s immoral!  Oh, these smug people who have been taught what to admire!  These unborn souls who want to shut us all up in the dark!  I suppose he went away thinking I put myself up higher than Raphael.  Who are we painting for? They don’t want it—­wouldn’t take it for a gift.  And here we are, a poor little group, standing amazed before the glory of the sun, and painting it—­for the blind!

SILVIA

Some day, Joe....

JOE

Some day—­yes, when the life has oozed out of all our bright canvasses, when only the “rules” are left.  And we won’t be able to rise from our graves and curse them!

SILVIA

Now, Joe!

JOE

I guess I let you in for a hard time, Silvia.  I wish sometimes I could really paint the kind of thing that goes with stupid people’s dining rooms.  They with their Long Island Louvres!

SILVIA

If you did, Joe, I’d put it in the stove.  Don’t think you are having all the fun of being a pioneer.  It’s exciting to be within a mile of it!

JOE

Good girl.  Ugh!  Let’s go to Boudet’s and have dinner.  I want to get the bad taste out of my mouth!

HIS LUCK

The living room in a small flat in Beekman Place.  Two women, one of them in mourning, sit beside the remains of tea.

VERA

But Jean, where are you going, when you pack up here?

JEAN

I’m not leaving here.  I’m staying on.

VERA

Oh.  But I thought that now ... you were talking about being free for your own work at last....

JEAN

If I have any work to do, I can do it here.  You don’t understand, quite.  All these years I have been living from whirlpool to whirlpool, never settled, always deracine—­the thought of getting accustomed to another place makes me shudder.