"And will you stay on--after last night?"

One of the illustrator’s banes was the occasional cropping for publication that altered the appearance of the original artwork. As reproduced in Harper's, this painting was cropped along both sides and the top. The resulting image emphasized the figures and diminished the effect of the architecture. In this case, the artist has personal experience of the architectural details. For several summers before settling permanently in Chadds Ford, the Wyeths had rented rooms at Windtryst, a Victorian-era estate just outside the village. Windtryst was destroyed by fire on September 11, 1914, and some months later N. C. Wyeth used the ruins as a setting for this illustration.