“I cannot thank you, Sir John,” she said. “I shall never be able to thank you.”
“Won’t you postpone the attempt, then?” he said gallantly, “until I have done something to deserve your gratitude? You will not forget—seven-thirty, Café Maston, Boulevard des Italiennes.”
She drove off in a little fiacre, nodding and smiling at Sir John, who remained upon the Avenue. He too, when she had disappeared, called a carriage.
“Hotel Ritz,” he said mechanically to the coachman. “If only her sister is half as pretty, no wonder that she has set the Parisians talking.”
Chapter II
THE ADVENTURE OF ANNABEL
The man spoke mercilessly, incisively, as a surgeon. Only he hated the words he uttered, hated the blunt honesty which forced them from his lips. Opposite, his pupil stood with bowed head and clasped hands.
“You have the temperament,” he said. “You have the ideas. Your first treatment of a subject is always correct, always suggestive. But of what avail is this? You have no execution, no finish. You lack only that mechanical knack of expression which is the least important part of an artist’s equipment, but which remains a tedious and absolute necessity. We have both tried hard to develop it—you and I—and we have failed. It is better to face the truth.”