“Tell me, Matthew,” she asked and the sound of speaking his name thrilled her in a way she had not known before. “You have no employment. You have no family. What do you see your prospects being?”
With a puzzled look, he asked, “what is ‘prospects’?”
She sighed. “What do you see tomorrow bringing for you?”
He sat up straight and his eyes beamed. “Do you know what I wanted to become? That is before now.”
She knew that he meant before the loss of his parents, and everything else life would have offered him. She knew without him saying it that whatever dream that had been, it was now dead.
“I wanted to be an artist. To paint magnificent pictures of places I have never seen before. To go to places I’ve never been before.”
But that dream had died for him. He did not say it, but she knew. “I would love to see some of your paintings.”
“Alas, I don’t have any. They were lost when I left the big city and came here. I don’t know what became of them.”
“Have you painted since you came here?” She knew the answer to that one as well.
“No. No spirit. Is that how you say it? That thing inside which must paint.”
“I understand,” she answered. “The motivation or the inspiration. If you lose that, well…” Now she was understanding more and she would not ask him any more questions about his thoughts on his future. He did not have a future.
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