Chap­ter XII brings us into a dif­fer­ent rhythm of Crome, one where thought, ambi­tion, and sub­tle yearn­ing take cen­ter stage. Gom­bauld retreats into his stu­dio, a trans­formed gra­nary, sur­round­ed by noth­ing but light, the smell of lin­seed oil, and a can­vas that will not sur­ren­der eas­i­ly. The paint­ing, intense in motion and form, shows a man mid-fall from a horse—his limbs bent, his body col­laps­ing under some unseen weight. And yet, despite the tech­ni­cal con­trol and depth of emo­tion, Gom­bauld feels a nag­ging incom­ple­tion, some­thing miss­ing just beyond his reach. He labors over bal­ance, not in the lit­er­al sense, but in com­po­si­tion, hop­ing to draw out that unspo­ken mes­sage only art can car­ry. His hands work auto­mat­i­cal­ly, but his mind refus­es to rest. For Gom­bauld, art is not a task—it is a strug­gle with silence, a push against the lim­its of visu­al lan­guage.

Mary, drawn both by curios­i­ty and a sub­tle need for affir­ma­tion, arrives under the polite excuse of deliv­er­ing a let­ter. She masks her true motive with civil­i­ty, but it’s clear she seeks more than just a social errand. Her admi­ra­tion for Gombauld’s tal­ent car­ries a dual charge: one part gen­uine inter­est, anoth­er part hope­ful inti­ma­cy. As she steps into the stu­dio, her trained skepticism—fed by mod­ern art critiques—collides with the instinc­tive beau­ty she sees on the can­vas. She com­ments, as if test­ing her foot­ing, not­ing how far the work drifts from cur­rent fash­ion while still man­ag­ing to com­mand her atten­tion. It’s an hon­est reac­tion, unpol­ished, and it sur­pris­es even her. Gom­bauld lis­tens with a mix of tol­er­ance and amuse­ment, aware that words often fail to keep pace with visu­al truth.

Their con­ver­sa­tion drifts from brush­work to abstrac­tion, from tech­nique to emo­tion, with each try­ing to define their place in rela­tion to the piece. Gom­bauld, crit­i­cal of pure cubism and dis­mis­sive of what he calls “fash­ion­able non­sense,” makes clear his desire for struc­ture that doesn’t sac­ri­fice soul. For him, mod­ern art should chal­lenge but not alien­ate, aim­ing to evoke rather than mere­ly puz­zle. Mary, in turn, tries to rec­on­cile her inher­it­ed scorn for roman­ti­cism with the sin­cer­i­ty in Gombauld’s method. The paint­ing, she con­fess­es, feels alive, and that makes it hard to cat­e­go­rize. Gom­bauld, amused by her strug­gle, responds not with the­o­ry but with a sto­ry about light and movement—how the real chal­lenge is mak­ing still­ness breathe. What fol­lows is less a debate and more an exchange of recog­ni­tion. Their lan­guage shifts from cri­tique to curios­i­ty, from judg­ment to con­nec­tion.

The emo­tion­al tone deep­ens as Mary lingers, unsure whether she has over­stayed or just begun to feel under­stood. Gom­bauld offers no clear signals—his focus remains on the can­vas, yet his open­ness sug­gests more than indif­fer­ence. Mary begins to see her­self dif­fer­ent­ly in the reflec­tion of his world, a place where clar­i­ty comes through effort, not charm. She had expect­ed either flat­tery or dis­re­gard, but instead receives some­thing rich­er: respect mixed with dis­tance. The gra­nary, with its dust and light, becomes a strange sanc­tu­ary where her thoughts are sharp­er, more hon­est. In those moments, the usu­al sur­face-lev­el social pat­terns are stripped away. Some­thing qui­eter emerges—a recog­ni­tion that intel­lect, like art, requires room to breathe and space to be wrong with­out fear.

For the read­er, the scene reveals the lay­ered emo­tion­al gram­mar of two peo­ple stand­ing near a shared pas­sion. Their bond isn’t roman­tic in the obvi­ous sense, but shaped instead by mutu­al hunger for some­thing mean­ing­ful. The unspo­ken ten­sion lies in what they both pursue—one through pig­ment, the oth­er through pres­ence. Mary wants to mat­ter in a world that often over­looks sin­cer­i­ty. Gom­bauld, too, chas­es rel­e­vance but through cre­ation rather than con­ver­sa­tion. The ten­sion between them isn’t resolved, and that’s what gives the chap­ter its weight. Their dia­logue, filled with half-formed thoughts and brief rev­e­la­tions, mir­rors the very process of artis­tic creation—messy, slow, and deeply human.

Artis­tic frus­tra­tion, espe­cial­ly as por­trayed through Gom­bauld, is some­thing many cre­ators will rec­og­nize. The desire to express some­thing elu­sive is rarely sat­is­fied, even when oth­ers see the work as com­plete. What the artist feels and what the view­er inter­prets often live in dif­fer­ent real­i­ties. Mary’s vis­it gives us access to both: the inside of the process and the out­side attempt to make sense of it. And that’s what makes this chap­ter res­onate. It tells us that under­stand­ing art—or people—is not about hav­ing the right opin­ion. It’s about being will­ing to sit with the mys­tery long enough to learn what ques­tions are worth ask­ing.