He took refuge in evasion.  “I’m not going to try to tell you how much I appreciate your proposition, Miss Sherwood.  But do you mind if I hold back my answer for the present and think it over?  Anyhow, to do all that is required I must be able to work in the open—­and I can’t do that until I get free of my entanglements with the police and my old acquaintances.”

Thus it was agreed upon.  Miss Sherwood turned to another subject.  The pre-public show of Hunt’s pictures had opened the previous day.

“When you were in the city yesterday, did you get in to see Mr. Hunt’s exhibition?”

“No,” he answered.  “Although I wanted to.  But you know I’ve already seen all of Mr. Hunt’s pictures that Mr. Graham has in his gallery.  How was the opening?”

“Crowded with guests.  And since they had been told that the pictures were unusual and good, of course the people were enthusiastic.”

“What kind of prices was Mr. Graham quoting?”

“He wasn’t quoting any.  He told me he wasn’t going to sell a picture, or even mention a price, until the public exhibition.  He’s very enthusiastic.  He thinks Mr. Hunt is already made—­and in a big way.”

And then she added, her level gaze very steady on Larry: 

“Of course Mr. Hunt is really a great painter.  But he needed a jolt to make him go out and really paint his own kind of stuff.  And he needed some one like you to put him across in a business way.”

When she left, she left Larry thinking:  thinking of her saying that Hunt “needed a jolt to make him go out and really paint his own kind of stuff.”  Hidden behind that remark somewhere could there be the explanation for the break between these two?  Larry began to see a glimmer of light.  It was entirely possible that Miss Sherwood, in so finished and adroit a manner that Hunt had not discerned her purpose, had herself given him this jolt or at least contributed to its force.  It might all have been diplomacy on her part, applied shrewdly to the man she understood and loved.  Yes, that might be the explanation.  Yes, perhaps she had been doing in a less trying way just what he was seeking to do under more stressful circumstances with Maggie:  to arouse him to his best by indirectly working at definite psychological reactions.

That afternoon Hunt appeared at Cedar Crest, and while there dropped in on Larry.  The big painter, in his full-blooded, boyish fashion, fairly gasconaded over the success of his exhibit.  Larry smiled at the other’s exuberant enthusiasm.  Hunt was one man who could boast without ever being offensively egotistical, for Hunt, added to his other gifts, had the divine gift of being able to laugh at himself.

Larry saw here an opportunity to forward that other ambition of his:  the bringing of Hunt and Miss Sherwood together.  And at this instant it flashed upon him that Miss Sherwood’s seemingly casual remarks about Hunt had not been casual at all.  Perhaps they had been carefully thought out and spoken with a definite purpose.  Perhaps Miss Sherwood had been very subtly appointing him her ambassador.  She was clever enough for that.