"But I believe that she will reach what she wants, some day," was the reply. "She has youth and health and unbounded hope. The other day I quoted an old Norwegian proverb, 'He waits not long who waits for a feast.' She wrote it on the kitchen door, saying, 'I'll have to wait till I can earn enough money to buy one hive of bees, and then I'll wait for that hive to swarm and make another, and for the two to grow into a hundred, and that into two hundred maybe, before I'll have enough to go away and study. It'll be years and years before I reach the mark I've set for myself, but when I'm really an artist, doing the things I've dreamed of doing, that will be a feast worth any amount of waiting.' Now in less than a week she has found her way to the first step, the first hive of bees, and I'm truly glad for her."
"But the happier such beginnings, the more tragic the end, oftentimes," Mr. Armond answered. "I've known such cases,—scores of them, when I was an art student myself in Paris. Girls and young fellows who thought they were budding geniuses. Who left home and country and everything else for art's sake. They lived in garrets, and slaved and struggled and starved on for years, only to find in the end that they were not geniuses, only to face failure. I never encourage beginners any more. For what is more cruel than to say to some hungry soul, 'Go on, wait, you'll reach the feast, your longing shall be satisfied,' when you know full well that in only one case in ten thousand, perhaps, can there be a feast for one of them. That when they stretch out their hands for bread there will be only a stone."
"But you reached it yourself, Armond, you know you did," answered Mr. Ellestad, who had known the new boarder well in his younger days. "To have had pictures hung in the Salon and Academy, to be recognized as a success in both hemispheres, isn't that enough of a feast to satisfy most men?"
The face turned to him in reply wore the look of one who has fought the bitterest of fights and fallen vanquished.
"No. To have a sweet snatched away just as it is placed to one's lips is worse than never to have tasted it. What good does it do me now? Look at me, a hopeless invalid, doomed to a year or two of unendurable idleness. How much easier it would be for me now to fold my hands and wait, if I had no baffled ambitions to torment me hourly, no higher desires in life than Chris there."
He pointed to the swarthy Mexican, digging a ditch across the alfalfa pasture. "No," he repeated. "I'd never encourage any one, now, to start on such an unsatisfactory quest."
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Ellestad. "When I heard that you were coming, I hoped that you would take an interest in Joyce Ware. You could be the greatest inspiration and help to her, if you only would."
"There she is now," exclaimed Mrs. Lee, who sat facing the road. "It does me good to see any one swing along as she does, with so much energy and purpose in every movement."
Mr. Armond turned his head slightly for a view of the girlish figure moving rapidly toward them.
"Don't tell her that I am an artist, Ellestad," he said, hurriedly, as she drew near, "or that I've ever lived in the Latin Quarter or—or anything like that. I know how schoolgirls gush over such things, and I'm in no mood for callow enthusiasms."