An Art Shop in Greenwich Village

When he had left the room I stood again before the canvas, partly enveloped in the great folds of the heavy window portieres. On the stairs outside I could hear the dragging footsteps of the old man as he tottered back to the shop below. I examined the canvas more closely now. There was upon it every color and combination of color, like the heaped-up pigments on a huge, untidy palette. But I noticed that brown seemed to predominate—a dirty, drab, faded brown, inexpressibly ugly, and somehow very sinister. It seemed a pigment color I had never seen before. I could see, too, that the paints were laid on very thick—it was done in oils—as though it had been worked over and over again, for months or even years.