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and that then it always changed. And they would have looked further,
and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party,
never the other. They would have argued, then, that this was done for a
purpose. If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler
or easier way, they would ask.
But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these
things. He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always
sunny when a visit began. No matter how much it might cloud up later,
it always began with a clear sky. He couldn't explain this curious fact
to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact. The truth of the matter was,
that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally's sight six hours she was so
famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all
consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into
his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn't when she
went out of it.
In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.
The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day,
through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs
of the checkered life it was leading. It was the happiest portrait, in
spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out
from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress
there are, from stomach ache to rabies. But Sellers liked it. He said it
was just himself all over--a portrait that sweated moods from every pore,
and no two moods alike. He said he had as many different kinds of
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