ACT Reading Quiz: Inferences And Conclusions

PASSAGE IV

NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the article Life in the Dark: The Oasis of the Abyss.

Until the late twentieth century, marine biologists operated under a fundamental assumption: all life on Earth ultimately depended on the sun. Photosynthesis was the undisputed engine of the global food web. It was believed that the deep ocean floor, plunged in perpetual darkness, freezing temperatures, and crushing pressure, was a biological desert. Scientists assumed that the few scavengers living in the abyss survived solely on "marine snow"—the slow drift of dead organic matter falling from the sunlit surface miles above.

That paradigm was shattered in 1977. Geologists piloting the deep-sea submersible Alvin were exploring the Galápagos Rift, a mid-ocean ridge in the eastern Pacific. They were searching for hydrothermal vents—underwater hot springs predicted by plate tectonic theory. They found the vents, but they also found something entirely unexpected: a thriving, densely populated ecosystem.

The vents are formed where the Earth's tectonic plates spread apart. Freezing seawater seeps down through cracks in the ocean crust and is heated by underlying magma chambers to temperatures exceeding 400°C (750°F). Because of the extreme hydrostatic pressure, the water does not boil. Instead, it becomes superheated and highly corrosive, leaching minerals like iron, copper, and zinc from the surrounding rocks. When this buoyant, mineral-rich fluid shoots back up into the freezing ocean water, the dissolved minerals instantly precipitate out, forming massive chimney-like structures known as "black smokers."

The sheer abundance of life around these toxic, boiling geysers was a biological anomaly. There were blind white crabs, pale eel-like fish, and beds of giant clams. Most striking were the giant tube worms, Riftia pachyptila, which grew up to eight feet long in dense, bush-like clusters, waving blood-red plumes in the dark water. Without sunlight, how was this oasis of life sustaining itself? The answer lay in a process entirely separate from photosynthesis: chemosynthesis.

The vent fluids are rich in hydrogen sulfide ($H_2S$), a chemical compound highly toxic to most known terrestrial and shallow-water organisms. However, specialized microorganisms—chemosynthetic bacteria—have evolved to use the chemical energy stored in the bonds of hydrogen sulfide to convert carbon dioxide and water into organic sugars. In this abyssal ecosystem, these bacteria serve the exact same foundational role that plants serve in a sunlit forest.

The giant tube worms are perhaps the most remarkable example of evolutionary adaptation to this environment. Upon dissection, biologists discovered that the adult Riftia tube worm has no mouth, no digestive tract, and no anus. It cannot eat in any traditional sense. Instead, its body contains a massive internal organ called a trophosome, which houses billions of symbiotic chemosynthetic bacteria. The worm's red plume acts as a gill, absorbing oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide from the water and transporting them via its blood to the bacteria. In return, the bacteria synthesize the organic compounds the worm needs to survive and grow at astonishingly rapid rates.

The discovery of hydrothermal vent communities fundamentally expanded our understanding of biology. It proved that life could thrive in the most extreme, hostile environments on the planet, completely divorced from solar energy. Furthermore, the genetic ancientness of these chemosynthetic bacteria has led some evolutionary biologists to propose a radical new theory: that life on Earth may not have begun in a warm, shallow sunlit tide pool, as Charles Darwin once speculated, but rather in the dark, boiling, chemical-rich crucible of a deep-sea vent.

It can reasonably be inferred from the final paragraph that the discovery of hydrothermal vents has influenced evolutionary biology by:

PASSAGE I

LITERARY NARRATIVE: This passage is adapted from the short story The Temperament of Steel.

The Steinway Model D sat in the center of the stage like a sleeping leviathan. To the untrained eye, it was merely a large, black piece of furniture, perhaps a bit dusty from disuse. But to Arthur, standing at the edge of the proscenium arch with his tool case in hand, it was a living thing holding its breath.

The theater manager, a young woman named Sarah who tapped constantly on a tablet, checked her watch. "We have the soloist arriving at two," she said, her voice echoing too loudly in the empty hall. "He's known for being… particular. Can you have it ready?"

"I do not tune for the soloist," Arthur said softly, walking down the aisle. "I tune for the physics."

Sarah blinked, unsure if he was joking. Arthur didn't wait for a response. He ascended the stairs, placed his leather case on the bench, and lifted the fallboard. The keys gleamed, a row of ivory and ebony teeth waiting to speak. He didn't play a chord immediately. Instead, he pressed the damper pedal and clapped his hands once, sharply. The sound rushed into the piano's belly, exciting the strings, and a ghostly wash of sympathetic vibration bloomed in the air.

"It's dry," Arthur muttered. "The soundboard has crowned too much. The humidity in here is unregulated."

He opened his case. It was a museum of specific tools: felt mutes, rubber wedges, a rosewood tuning hammer that had belonged to his grandfather. Arthur was one of the few technicians left who tuned strictly by ear. Most of the younger generation used digital strobes, staring at a needle on a screen until it turned green. Arthur despised them. A machine could measure frequency, but it could not measure color.

He began in the middle register, setting the temperament. This was the foundation, the "bearing octave" upon which the rest of the instrument's logic relied. He struck the A-440, his ears straining for the beat rate—the rhythmic wobbling sound that occurred when two intervals were slightly out of phase.

Wah-wah-wah-wah.

Too fast. He nudged the tuning pin a fraction of a millimeter counter-clockwise. The steel string groaned under thousands of pounds of tension. He struck the key again. The beat slowed. The interval widened, the sound growing clearer, colder, more brilliant.

As he worked, Arthur's mind drifted to the first time he had tuned this specific piano, twenty years ago. It had been brand new then, brash and shouting, its hammers hard and unyielding. Now, the felt on the hammers was grooved and compressed. The tone was darker, mellower, like a voice that had spent years smoking cigarettes. It had history.

"You're taking a long time on the middle notes," Sarah said from the front row. She had stopped tapping on her tablet.

"If the center is not true, the ends cannot hold," Arthur said, quoting Yeats without realizing it. "The piano is under twenty tons of tension. If I move too quickly, the frame shifts. The treble will go sharp before I even finish the bass."

He moved to the upper register. This was the most dangerous territory. The strings were short and taut; a sudden slip of the wrench could snap the wire. He played a high C, then its octave. The high note should have sparkled, but it sounded dead—a "thud" rather than a "ping."

Arthur frowned. He pulled a voicing needle from his kit—a tool that looked like a dentist's pick. He leaned into the belly of the piano, examining the hammer felt. It was too hard packed. The fibers were crushed. Gently, with the precision of a surgeon, he pricked the felt shoulder of the hammer, aerating the wool to give it more spring. He struck the note again. Ping.

It wasn't perfect, but it was alive. The note hung in the air, sustaining long after his finger left the key.

By the time he reached the lowest bass notes, the copper-wound strings that growled like distant thunder, his back ached. He checked his watch. One fifty-five. He sat back and played a C-major chord. It rang out, massive and coherent. The "beating" of the intervals was gone, replaced by a stillness, a locked-in quality that made the air feel solid. It was no longer a collection of wood and wire; it was a single voice.

The stage door opened. The soloist walked in, a man in a scarf who looked tired and hurried. He didn't acknowledge Arthur. He walked straight to the bench, sat down, and played a rapid, violent cadenza, his hands blurring over the keys Arthur had just caressed.

The soloist stopped. He played the high C—the one Arthur had needled. He played it again. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"It's acceptable," the soloist said to Sarah.

Arthur packed his tools. "Acceptable" was the highest praise the world offered these days. He snapped his case shut, the sound sharp and final. He didn't need the soloist's approval. He had heard the chord. For a few minutes, in the silence before the music began, the piano had been perfect.

Based on the passage, Arthur's attitude toward the digital strobe tuners used by younger technicians can best be described as:

PASSAGE IV

NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the article The Shark's Secret Armor.

For billions of years, nature has been conducting the ultimate research and development experiment. Through the ruthless process of natural selection, life has engineered solutions to problems that human designers still struggle to solve. This concept is the foundation of biomimicry, a discipline that seeks to emulate nature's time-tested patterns and strategies. One of the most fruitful subjects of this study is a creature often feared but rarely understood as an engineering marvel: the shark.

To the naked eye, a shark looks sleek and smooth. However, if you were to run your hand along a shark's flank—from tail to head—it would feel like rough sandpaper. This roughness is caused by millions of microscopic scales called dermal denticles (literally "skin teeth"). Unlike the flat, overlapping scales of a goldfish, denticles are tiny, tooth-like structures made of dentin and enamel, featuring raised ridges aligned with the flow of water.

For decades, marine biologists were puzzled by these structures. Logic suggested that a perfectly smooth surface would create the least amount of friction, allowing the shark to slice through the water efficiently. Yet, the shark is one of the ocean's fastest predators. The secret lies in the physics of fluid dynamics. As a shark swims, water flows over its skin. On a smooth surface, this flow creates chaotic eddies and swirls known as turbulence, which suck the swimmer backward and increase drag.

The denticles disrupt this process. The microscopic ridges channel the water, organizing the flow into linear streams. This prevents the formation of turbulent eddies close to the skin, effectively reducing drag by up to 10 percent. In the 1980s, NASA engineers applied this principle to riblet-coated film on boat hulls, and later, swimsuit manufacturers created "sharkskin" suits. These suits were so effective at reducing drag that they were controversial in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where swimmers shattered world records, leading to a ban on certain high-tech fabrics.

However, speed is not the only advantage denticles provide. In the ocean, any surface left stationary is quickly colonized by marine life—barnacles, algae, and bacteria—in a process known as biofouling. Large, slow-moving marine mammals like whales often host heavy colonies of barnacles. Sharks, however, remain remarkably clean.

Scientists discovered that the denticle pattern creates an inhospitable terrain for microscopic invaders. The ridges are spaced so precisely that bacteria cannot gain a foothold. The surface area available for attachment is minimized, and the physical stress on the bacterial cell walls prevents them from colonizing. This is a structural defense, not a chemical one. The shark does not secrete antibiotics or toxins; its skin simply makes it impossible for the bacteria to land.

This discovery has profound implications for human health. In hospitals, the battle against "superbugs"—bacteria resistant to antibiotics—is a constant crisis. Traditional cleaning relies on harsh chemicals, which bacteria can eventually evolve to resist. A biotechnology company, inspired by the shark, has developed a microscopic surface texture called Sharklet. When applied to medical devices, catheters, and hospital surfaces, this pattern inhibits bacterial growth by up to 94 percent without using a single drop of disinfectant.

The shark's skin is a paradox: it is rough to go fast, and it is structured to stay clean. It challenges the human tendency to solve problems with brute force—more fuel for speed, stronger poisons for cleaning. Nature, by contrast, solves problems with geometry. As we face the challenges of the 21st century, from energy efficiency to antibiotic resistance, the solutions may already be swimming in the oceans, waiting for us to look close enough to see them.

Which of the following best summarizes the "paradox" mentioned in the final paragraph?

1 The gate hung on one hinge now, exactly 2 as Elias remembered it from the summer he 3 left, though the paint had long since peeled 4 to a color that matched no name he 5 knew. He set his suitcase down at the 6 property line, as if some invisible customs agent 7 might still ask him to declare his reasons 8 for returning. Inside the house a lamp burned 9 in the kitchen window, the same lamp his 10 father used to leave on until the last 11 of the harvest was in, no matter the 12 season. Elias did not go up the walk. 13 He stood at the gate for a long 14 while, counting the panes of glass that were 15 still unbroken, then turned and walked back toward 16 the road he had come in on.

It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that Elias:

1 Douglas fir seedlings planted in soil already colonized 2 by mycorrhizal fungi from an established forest grew 3 nearly twice as fast, on average, as seedlings 4 planted in sterilized soil from the same site. 5 Researchers had expected some advantage from the fungal 6 partnership, since the fungi extend a plant's effective 7 root system in exchange for sugars, but the 8 magnitude surprised them: seedlings in colonized soil also 9 survived a simulated drought at more than twice 10 the rate of their sterile-soil counterparts, even 11 though both groups received identical amounts of water 12 throughout the study. The fungal networks, it seemed, 13 were doing more than delivering nutrients; they appeared 14 to be buffering the young trees against stress 15 that water alone could not explain.

The passage most strongly suggests that the mycorrhizal fungi in this study:

1 The composer Aldous Kray refused, for most of 2 his career, to publish metronome markings in his 3 scores, insisting that a printed tempo would calcify 4 into "a single correct performance," when in fact 5 he revised his own sense of the right 6 tempo nearly every time he conducted a piece 7 himself. Only in the last years of his 8 life, after a younger generation of conductors had 9 begun performing his symphonies at tempos he found 10 nearly unrecognizable, did Kray relent and issue markings, 11 conceding in a letter to a colleague that 12 "a silence on the page, it turns out, 13 invites more mischief than a number would have."

It can most reasonably be inferred that Kray's decision to finally issue metronome markings was prompted mainly by:

1 Reviewers often note that the narrator of "Low 2 Tide" never once uses the word "lied," despite 3 describing at length the many small inaccuracies she 4 tells her sister over the course of the 5 novel. She calls them "adjustments," "kindnesses," and once, 6 memorably, "corrections to an imperfect record." The author 7 never intervenes to contradict this language, allowing each 8 euphemism to stand as the narrator's own. Yet 9 the sister's letters, quoted in full at the 10 novel's end, describe events that align, detail for 11 detail, with what actually happened, contradicting the narrator's 12 account at nearly every turn where the two 13 diverge.

The inclusion of the sister's letters at the novel's end most strongly suggests that readers are meant to:

1 "You don't have to come to the hearing," 2 Odell told his brother over the phone, in 3 the same tone he used when telling their 4 mother she didn't have to worry about money. 5 Denny said nothing for a moment, then asked 6 what time the hearing started, as though the 7 question answered itself. Odell gave him the time, 8 then added that there was a later bus 9 now, one that would get him there with 10 twenty minutes to spare, information Denny had not 11 asked for and that Odell delivered as if 12 reciting a schedule he had memorized months ago. 13 Neither brother mentioned the bus again before hanging 14 up.

It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that Odell:

1 When the seasonal rains fail across the floodplains of 2 East Africa, most fish perish within days, but the 3 African lungfish burrows into the drying mud and secretes 4 a cocoon of hardened mucus around its body, leaving 5 only a narrow breathing tube open to the air. 6 Sealed inside for months, the lungfish drops its heart 7 rate to a fraction of normal and allows urea, 8 a waste product ordinarily flushed from the blood, to 9 accumulate in its tissues at concentrations that would poison 10 most vertebrates. Physiologists have found that lungfish tissue 11 contains proteins that bind loosely to urea molecules, apparently 12 preventing them from disrupting the folding of other proteins 13 the way free urea would in an unprotected cell.

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that during its dormant period, the lungfish's body:

1 Researchers tracking a population of alpine marmots noticed that 2 colonies at higher elevations produced fewer pups per litter 3 than those lower on the mountain, despite having access 4 to similar amounts of food during the summer months. 5 When the team measured hibernation length, they found that 6 marmots at higher sites spent nearly three additional weeks 7 underground each winter. Females from these colonies also emerged 8 in spring with lower fat reserves than their lowland 9 counterparts, even though both groups entered hibernation with comparable 10 weight. The high-elevation females, moreover, rarely mated within the 11 first two weeks after emergence, unlike lowland females, who 12 bred almost immediately. By the time high-elevation females did 13 breed, the growing season available for pups to fatten 14 before the next winter was already substantially shorter.

It can reasonably be inferred that the smaller litters among high-elevation marmots resulted primarily from:

1 Geologists studying a layer of volcanic ash embedded in 2 a canyon wall noticed that the ash contained crystals 3 of a mineral that forms only above a specific 4 temperature threshold. Above and below this ash layer, the 5 surrounding sediment showed clear signs of having been deposited 6 slowly by a shallow, calm lake, with thin, evenly 7 spaced bands typical of seasonal buildup over centuries. The 8 ash layer itself, however, showed no such banding and 9 instead lay as a single, uninterrupted sheet nearly a 10 meter thick. Chemical analysis further revealed that organic material 11 trapped just beneath the ash had been charred rather 12 than simply buried, while material trapped within the ash 13 itself remained unburned. No comparable ash deposits appeared anywhere 14 else in the surrounding rock record for several kilometers.

It can reasonably be inferred from the evidence in the ash layer that the volcanic event that produced it:

1 Once the letter was sealed, Rosalind did not immediately 2 carry it to the post office, though the walk 3 was short and she had nowhere else to be 4 that afternoon. Instead she set it on the mantel, 5 propped against the clock, where she could see it 6 each time she passed through the room. Three days 7 later it was still there, the envelope slightly curled 8 at one corner from the heat of the fire. 9 She had, by then, rewritten portions of it twice 10 more in her head, though never on paper, and 11 had twice reached for her coat before deciding the 12 errand could wait until tomorrow. Her sister, noticing the 13 letter's permanent place on the mantel, finally asked when 14 she intended to send it. Rosalind only shrugged and 15 said there was no hurry.

It can most reasonably be inferred that Rosalind's repeated delay in mailing the letter suggests that she:

1 When the composer submitted her symphony for its premiere, 2 she included a note asking the conductor to omit 3 the printed program notes she had written the previous 4 year, describing instead only the movement titles without further 5 explanation. She had grown, she wrote, suspicious of listeners 6 who arrived already informed about what each passage was 7 meant to represent, believing that such listeners often reported 8 hearing exactly what the notes told them to expect, 9 regardless of what the orchestra actually played. In later 10 interviews, she recalled deliberately withholding a spoken introduction before 11 one performance and comparing audience reactions to those from 12 an earlier concert where she had spoken at length 13 beforehand. The audience who heard no introduction, she noted, 14 described the same passage in far more varied and 15 unexpected terms.

It can most reasonably be inferred that the composer's comparison of the two audiences was intended to demonstrate that:

1 Botanists studying a rare orchid species noted that its 2 flowers open only after sunset and close again before 3 dawn, releasing a scent detectable only within a few 4 meters of the plant. Moths captured near blooming orchids 5 carried pollen loads matching the orchid's structure, yet cameras 6 set up through several nights recorded moths visiting the 7 flowers far less often than researchers expected given the 8 local moth population. Closer inspection of the moths' proboscises 9 revealed wear patterns consistent with repeated feeding at the 10 orchid's narrow nectar spur, a structure too deep for 11 most other local insects to reach. Meanwhile, seed counts 12 from pollinated flowers showed unusually high rates of successful 13 fertilization compared with related orchid species pollinated by a 14 wider range of visiting insects.

It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that, despite the orchid's low rate of moth visitation, the plant achieved:

PASSAGE II

SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the essay The Mall Maker's Regret.

In 1956, a new architectural form appeared in Edina, Minnesota, that would forever alter the American landscape. It was a massive, windowless box surrounded by a sea of asphalt, but inside, it was a climate-controlled paradise of commerce and community. This was the Southdale Center, the world's first enclosed shopping mall. Its creator, Victor Gruen, was an Austrian socialist and a refugee who had fled the Nazis in 1938. He did not design the mall to celebrate American consumerism; he designed it to save the American suburbs from themselves.

When Gruen arrived in the United States, he was horrified by the chaotic sprawl of the suburbs. He saw miles of tract housing isolated from one another, with no central "heart" where people could gather, walk, or debate. To Gruen, the suburb was a "land of wasted opportunities." He envisioned a solution inspired by the Vienna of his youth: the agora, or city center. He believed that by clustering stores, art, and civic spaces within a pedestrian-friendly enclosure, he could recreate the intimacy of a European downtown in the middle of the Midwestern sprawl.

Gruen's concept was revolutionary. Before Southdale, shopping centers were "strip malls"—linear rows of stores facing the street, exposed to the elements. Southdale was introverted. It turned its back on the automobile, forcing drivers to leave their cars at the perimeter and enter a protected, pedestrian-only environment. It featured a central garden court with a skylight, sculptures, and a café. It was designed to be a "third place," distinct from home and work, where social life could flourish protected from Minnesota's harsh winters.

The economic success of Gruen's invention was immediate and overwhelming. Developers across the country rushed to replicate the Southdale model. However, they copied the form, not the philosophy. They stripped away the libraries, post offices, and community centers Gruen had envisioned, leaving only the retail stores. They realized that the enclosed environment had a powerful psychological effect on consumers, a phenomenon later termed the "Gruen Effect." By sealing off the outside world—removing clocks, windows, and weather—malls disoriented shoppers, suspending their sense of time and making them more susceptible to impulse buys.

Instead of curbing suburban sprawl, the shopping mall accelerated it. The massive tax revenue generated by these retail giants encouraged municipalities to rezone land for commercial development further and further from the city center. The "heart" of the community became a fortress of private property, policed by security guards rather than public consensus. Downtown districts, unable to compete with the climate-controlled convenience of the mall, began to wither.

Gruen watched this transformation with growing horror. He had intended to bring the culture of the city to the suburbs; instead, he had drained the life from the city. In his later years, Gruen became a vocal critic of his own creation. He described the proliferation of malls as "bastard developments" that distorted his original vision. In 1978, just before his death, he famously disavowed the movement he started. "I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments," he told a journalist. "They destroyed our cities."

Today, the enclosed mall is in decline, replaced by online shopping and "lifestyle centers"—open-air developments that ironically mimic the traditional main streets Gruen tried to replace. Yet, Gruen's legacy remains visible in the DNA of American commerce. He proved that environment controls behavior, even if the result was not the utopia he imagined.

Which of the following best summarizes Gruen's reaction to the proliferation of shopping malls in the 1960s and 1970s?

1 The translator spent eleven years rendering the epic into 2 English, yet in his introduction he confessed to leaving 3 one recurring phrase, a term meaning something between "duty" 4 and "debt owed to the dead," entirely untranslated wherever 5 it appeared in the original. He explained that every 6 English equivalent he tried made the warriors sound either 7 legalistic or sentimental, qualities absent from the source. Reviewers 8 praised the translation's fluency but several complained that the 9 untranslated word interrupted their reading, forcing them to consult 10 a glossary at the back of the book. The translator 11 later admitted, in a letter to a colleague, that 12 he had come to regard those interruptions not as 13 a flaw but as the only honest way to 14 remind readers that some part of the original could 15 never fully cross into English.

It can most reasonably be inferred that the translator regarded the reader's need to consult a glossary as:

1 The apartment came furnished, which was the only 2 reason Marisol had taken it, but she had 3 not expected the furniture to feel quite so 4 much like someone else's decisions. The armchair faced 5 a wall instead of the window, the way 6 no one would choose to sit unless they 7 wanted to avoid looking at whatever was outside. 8 She moved it, that first week, angling it 9 toward the light, and told herself she would 10 return it before she left, the way you 11 return a borrowed coat. Eight months later the 12 chair was still turned toward the window, and 13 Marisol had stopped noticing that she had ever 14 meant to put it back.

The passage most strongly suggests that Marisol's failure to return the chair to its original position indicates that she:

1 When the city eliminated fees for parking permits 2 in the historic district, officials expected the change 3 to ease congestion by encouraging residents to leave 4 their cars at home and use the new 5 trolley line instead. Six months later, permit applications 6 had risen by forty percent, yet trolley ridership 7 had barely moved. Residents who had previously parked 8 illegally on side streets, absorbing the risk of 9 occasional tickets, now applied for the free permits 10 in droves, while continuing to drive exactly as 11 they always had. The only measurable shift was 12 in the city's finances: the parking-enforcement division, 13 no longer collecting fines, saw its budget cut 14 by a third within the year.

The passage most strongly suggests that eliminating the parking fees:

1 The sculptor never titled her bronze figures, insisting instead 2 that each piece be identified only by a catalog 3 number stamped into its base. Critics who visited her 4 studio noted that she kept no photographs of finished 5 works on display, and that she rarely attended her 6 own openings, sending an assistant in her place. When 7 asked once why she avoided naming her pieces, she 8 replied only that a name "tells the viewer where 9 to stop looking." She did, however, keep detailed private 10 notebooks describing the models who sat for each cast, 11 their postures, and the light in the room that 12 day, filling pages no visitor was ever permitted to 13 read. Her public silence, then, stood in sharp contrast 14 to the meticulous record she kept for herself alone.

It can most reasonably be inferred that the sculptor's private notebooks indicate that she:

1 Critics who praise Marta Voss for her restraint 2 often overlook how deliberately she withholds color from 3 her canvases until the very last session, when 4 a single stroke of ochre or vermilion appears 5 amid what has otherwise been a landscape of 6 grays. It is tempting to read this as 7 a gesture of minimalism, but Voss herself has 8 called the gray months of preparation "an argument 9 I am having with the painting," one that 10 the late color only settles, never opens. Her 11 admirers wait for that final stroke the way 12 an audience waits for a soloist's cadenza, aware 13 that everything before it was necessary but that 14 nothing before it was the point.

It can most reasonably be inferred that Voss's admirers regard the long gray stage of her paintings as: