Linda Thorne rose. She rested her hand confidentially within Dinah’s arm, much to Dinah’s chagrin, and proposed that they should walk together along the sands to look for Mr. Arbuthnot.
‘Yes, I must positively tell you the whole story. Your husband had finished his sketch of the lovely fisher-girl. The young person was not at all lovely, in fact. But she was striking. She had distinct genre. Artists care for genre, you know, much more than for beauty.’
Dinah resolved to question Gaston as to the truth of this. She resolved to cultivate distinct genre in herself for the remainder of her days.
‘Striking—that word sums up all. The big cobalt-blue eyes, that say about as much, in reality, as a china tea-saucer, and are supposed by imaginative men to say everything—blonde hair worn in a pigtail, palpably not original, to her heels; complexion carefully toned to a shade one point short of freckles; bare arms, akimbo—excellently shaped arms, of course; a native prawn basket, and a fishing-dress from Worth’s. I got to know the type so well,’ said Linda, ‘in my governess days, during one summer, especially, when the Benjamin sent me to Houlgate with her children.’
Dinah, who, as we have seen, had no genius for supplying the hooks and eyes of conversation, remained chillingly silent.
‘Your husband had finished his sketch of her—an admirably idealised one. I have it here.’ And Dinah, for the first time, perceived that Mrs. Thorne held possession of Gaston’s sketch-book. ‘Let us look at it together!’ impulsively, ‘or are you—no doubt you are—blasée about sketches? Well, well, it may be natural. Married to an artist, if one has no real, strong, natural talent for art——’
‘I have no real, strong, natural talent for anything,’ interrupted poor Dinah petulantly.
‘Oh—naughty! You must not say such things. I will not allow you to be modest. Mr. Arbuthnot tells me your needlework is’—Linda looked about her as though an encomium were hard to find—‘most elaborate! In these days needlework ranks among the fine arts. Of course you are wild about this exquisite new stitch from Vienna?’
‘I have not seen it. The only wool-work I do is old-fashioned cross-stitch.’