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All those people had never seen her before. But she made them understand instantly an awful lot about her. She was scared and humble and shy—had never spoken to a crowd before. Plainly, only a cataclysm of the first magnitude could have loosened her tongue. Cornelia Stedman was suddenly universal—representing all sweet, quiet, affectionate, bewildered housewives full of years.

Stedman was speechless. He had expected nothing like this.

“Ten days from now,” said Cornelia unevenly, “my husband’s gonna be sixty. And I just wonder how much longer we’re gonna have to wait before the world finally wakes up and admits he’s one of the greatest painters who ever lived.” She bit her lip and fought back tears.

“Some high art muckety-muck from the paper says in the paper tonight that my husband’s some kind of a humbug.” Now the tears came. “There’s a nice birthday present for a man who’s given his whole life to art,” she said.

The thought broke her up so much that she could hardly begin her next sentence. “My husband,” she said at last, “entered ten beautiful pictures in the Annual Exhibition of the so-called Seminole Highlands Art Association, and every one of ’em got rejected.” She pointed to a painting in the window of a studio across the street. Her lips moved. She was trying to say something about the painting, a huge, shocking abstract, but no coherent sounds came from her throat.

Cornelia’s speech was over. Stedman led her tenderly into the studio, closed the door.

Stedman kissed his wife and made her a drink. He was in a peculiar position, since he knew perfectly well that he was a humbug. He knew his paintings were awful, knew what a good picture was, knew what a good painter was. But he had somehow never passed the information on to his wife. Cornelia’s high opinion of his talent, while showing dreadful taste, was the most precious thing that Stedman had.

When Cornelia had finished her drink, she finished her speech, too. “All your beautiful pictures got rejected,” she said. She pointed to the painting across the street with a hand that was now steady and deadly. “And that mess across the street won first prize,” she said.

“Well, honey bunch,” said Stedman, “like we’ve always said, we’ve got to take the bad with the good, and the good’s been mighty good.” The painting across the street was superbly imaginative, powerful, sincere—and Stedman knew it, felt it in his bones.

“There’s all kinds of painting styles, honey bunch,” he said, “and some kinds of people like one kind and some kinds of people like another kind, and that’s the way the ball bounces.”

Cornelia continued to stare across the street. “I wouldn’t give that awful thing houseroom,” she said darkly. “There’s a big conspiracy going on against you,” she said, “and it’s high time somebody blew the whistle.”

Cornelia stood up, slowly, dangerously, still staring across the street. “Now what’s she think she’s pasting in the window?” she said.

Across the street, Sylvia Lazarro was taping a newspaper article to the front window of her husband’s studio. It was the article that called Stedman a humbug.

Sylvia was putting it up for all to see, not because of the humbug crack but because of what it said about her husband, John Lazarro. It said Lazarro was the most exciting young abstractionist in Florida. It said Lazarro was capable of expressing complex emotions with extraordinarily simple elements. It said Lazarro painted with the rarest of all pigments—Lazarro painted with soul.

It said also that Lazarro had begun his art career as a boy wonder, discovered in the Chicago slums. He was now only twenty-three. He had never been to art school. He was self-taught.

In the window with the clipping was the painting that had won all the praise and a two-hundred-dollar first prize besides.

In the painting, Lazarro had tried to trap on canvas the pregnant stillness, massive ache and cold sweat in the moment before the break of a thunderstorm. The clouds didn’t look like real clouds. They looked like big gray boulders—as solid as granite,