Achmed Abdullah

“ Instead of that, she fell in love with Mark Cutter, who was a fine artist, but who was, too, a man of flaming, headlong fancies, with a tendency to leap obstacles of his own deliberate building. He proved this by forgetting what James Massingham had done for him, what James Massingham might do against him; and one day—it was one of those grim days of fate when a heavy mantle of gray-and-lavender mist is soaking and shivering down from a leaden, puffed sky—he eloped with Judith. ”

“ For the artist had expressed a wish to see his paintings before he died.
There he lay, the greatest painter of his generation, quite fearless, surrounded by the work of his lifetime, serene in the judgment of posterity. And straight across from the foot of his bed was the portrait of Judith—with the spray of roses in front of it.
A week passed, and Thornton Mills, the eminent specialist, gave judgment that Mark Cutter had one more day to live, one day at the utmost. On that day James Massingham sent away the nurses. He himself would see the other through his dying moments. ”

“ For the paintings in his gallery—with the single exception of the full-length portrait of his wife by Mark Cutter—meant to him the visualized achievements of so and so much force and energy, their very beauty representing a check of so and so many figures and, finally, the amount of brain strength that that it had taken to earn the cash equivalent of the check. The fact that he was a good judge of paintings and that he refused to buy inferior ones was really an added proof of his masterful business acumen.
He admired exactly two things—success and fairness ”