Page:Stringer - Wine of Life.djvu/90

80 with his work. So, ill-at-ease, he talked of other and lighter things. It was not, in fact, until Hardy rose to go that they seemed to reach solid ground again.

"I think I can see what you're trying to reach here," the novelist said as he paused before Storrow's half-finished modelling of a she-bear standing on guard over her cubs. "But aren't you going the wrong way about it?"

"Is there any other way?" demanded Storrow, already depressed by a suspicion of wasted effort. He felt the need for guidance, felt it keenly and continually, yet he nursed the instinctive distaste of the solitary worker for the criticism of others.

"That's something I've been wondering about," acknowledged Hardy with his capitulating smile. "I've been wondering if this turn of yours towards sculpture isn't more of an accident than you imagine. Take these animal groups you've done, for instance! They're more episodic than they are statuesque. They're more dramatic than they are plastic. It seems to me that all along you've really been trying to tell a story. Look at your Last Of The Pack there! That's almost pure narrative. I should think you could have expressed all that in a written story about a wolf, and had a freer swing with your material."

"But when I've tried to write, it's always been a failure."

"By no means. You've been trying to write in clay here, and they're not altogether failures. You've been trying to tell a story without knowing it."

"The wild-life stuff has to be a story," argued Storrow.

"Deming doesn't make it that."

"Deming worked more with the Indian than with animals."

"But you've picked the hardest medium in the world to tell your story," contended Hardy. "And now I think of it, why did you pick the wild life stuff?"