"You have the artistic lines very strongly marked," Vernon was saying. "One, two, three—yes, painting—music perhaps?"
"I am very fond of music," said Betty, thinking of the hour's daily struggle with the Mikado and the Moonlight Sonata. "But three arts. What could the third one be?" Her thoughts played for an instant with unheard-of triumphs achieved behind footlights—rapturous applause, showers of bouquets.
"Whatever it is, you've enormous talent for it," he said; "you'll find out what it is in good time. Perhaps it'll be something much more important than the other two put together, and perhaps you've got even more talent for it than you have for others."
"But there isn't any other talent that I can think of."
"I can think of a few. There's the stage,—but it's not that, I fancy, or not exactly that. There's literature—confess now, don't you write poetry sometimes when you're all alone at night? Then there's the art of being amusing, and the art of being—of being liked."
"Shall I be successful in any of the arts?"
"In one, certainly."
"Ah," said Betty, "if I could only go to Paris!"
"It's not always necessary to go to Paris for success in one's art," he said.
"But I want to go. I'm sure I could do better there."