Too Late to Love Me novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Panel

Nobody clapped.

For a long moment the whole hall just looked at the water in my painting.

Then a woman on the panel stood up, a gray-haired landscape painter with chalk on her sleeves.

She walked to the edge of the stage and looked at my canvas for a long time.

"Miss Aldridge," she said, without turning around.

"The harbor you posted online."

"The fog line behind the buoy, where the water goes from gray to white."

"Yes?" said Regan.

"It's three strokes of a palette knife, laid wet into wet, with a drag at the end that leaves a ridge."

"I'd like you to show the hall that stroke on the canvas in front of you."

"You have a brush and a knife and ten minutes."

Regan looked at the knife on her tray.

She didn't pick it up.

"I don't think that's fair," she said, and her voice cracked in half.

"I'm tired, and she's had her whole life to practice, and I had a moment of..."

"A moment of what?" said the woman, kindly.

The hall waited.

Regan's eyes went to the front row, to her mother, and her mother looked straight ahead.

"Nothing," Regan said.

The woman nodded.

"The panel will vote," she said.

They voted by raised hand, quick and decisive.

Five hands went up for me.

One hand stayed in a lap, folded neatly over the other.

"By the terms of Mrs. Aldridge's own wager," said the dean, in a voice that shook.

"Miss Aldridge's entry is withdrawn, and Miss Ferrier remains at Whitcombe."

"The incident in Ware Hall on Saturday night has been referred to the board."

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