equipment and turn him loose on the Sahara desert as to shut a painter up
in a town like this and expect him to create. Artists need atmosphere just
as business men need banks. It's the meeting of like forces that makes
anything really go.

UNCLE RICHARD

But we are not wholly barbarous here, Richard. _This_, for example, and no
first-class New England city lacks culture.

RICHARD

I suppose there's no use explaining, but what first-class New England
cities regard as _culture_ your real artist avoids as he would avoid
poison.

UNCLE RICHARD

Well, well. But circumstances--really, Richard, don't you think it your
_duty_ to stay?

RICHARD

Why?

UNCLE RICHARD

Must I explain? We are met, after a long separation, in circumstances
personally sorrowful to me, and I trust, to some extent, to you as well.
We....