And he needed some one like you to put him across in a business way." When she left, she left Larry thinking: thinking of her saying that Hunt "needed a jolt to make him go out and really paint his own kind of stuff." Hidden behind that remark somewhere could there be the explanation for the break between these two?
Larry began to see a glimmer of light.

It was entirely possible that Miss Sherwood, in so finished and adroit a manner that Hunt had not discerned her purpose, had herself given him this jolt or at least contributed to its force.

It might all have been diplomacy on her part, applied shrewdly to the man she understood and loved.

Yes, that might be the explanation.

Yes, perhaps she had been doing in a less trying way just what he was seeking to do under more stressful circumstances with Maggie: to arouse him to his best by indirectly working at definite psychological reactions.
That afternoon Hunt appeared at Cedar Crest, and while there dropped in on Larry.