“My clever, clever little Hilda!” Odd repeated, turning to look at the young artist. Her eyes met his with their wide, sweet gaze that said nothing. Hilda was evidently only capable of saying things on canvas.
“It is lovely.”
“You like it really?”
“I really think it is about as charming a picture as I have seen a woman do. So womanly too.” Odd turned to Katherine, it was difficult not to merge Hilda in her art, not to talk about her talent as a thing apart from her personality: “She expresses herself, she doesn’t imitate.”
“Perhaps that is rather unwomanly,” laughed Katherine: “a crawling imitativeness seems unfortunately characteristic. Certainly Hilda has none of it. She has inspired me with hopes for my sex.”
“Really cleverer than Madame Morisot,” said Odd, looking back to the canvas, “delightful as she is! She could touch a few notes surely, gracefully; Hilda has got hold of a chord. Yes, Hilda, you are an artist. Have you any others?”
Hilda brought forward two. One was a small study of a branch of pink blossoms in a white porcelain vase; the other a woman in white standing at a window and looking out at the twilight. This last was, perhaps, the cleverest of the three; the lines of the woman’s back, shoulder, profil perdu, astonishingly beautiful.
“You are fond of dreams and shadows, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t a very wide range, but one can only try to do the things one is fitted for. I like all sorts of pictures, but I like to paint demi-tints and twilights and soft lamplight effects.”
“‘Car nous voulons la nuance encor—
pas la couleur, rien que la nuance,’”