Look at the painting. Pretend you’re not you. Let the picture speak to you. It wants to speak to you. It’s speaking to you across hundreds of years. This is its power. It’s trying to tell you something, a universal thing, a thing that has no boundary in time. Why is the girl laughing?” I stared at the painting. I waited. It seemed too obvious. “Because she’s happy?” I said. Tim turned to me and smiled. “Yes.” “That’s it?”
