Love should run out to meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room. From the first moment when they see each other, with a pang of curiosity, through stage after stage of growing pleasure and embarrassment, they can read the expression of their own trouble in each other’s eyes. There is here no declaration properly so called; the feeling is so plainly shared, that as soon as the man knows what it is in his own heart, he is sure of what it is in the woman’s.

Enough traipsing around in the paperback swamps — time to get back to the refined and dignified world of New Orleans . . .

A remote bayou rendezvous . . .

Painting for the cover of the paperback edition of John O’Hara’s The Farmer’s Hotel.

Click on the images to enlarge.