"Nerves! nerves!" repeated Helen with something like a sneer. "We do not grow nerves in Poland, my dear friend. We must work hard for our art, and every hardship puts its foot on the squirming nerves. No artist can grow big, with those nerves biting her power."
Another revelation! Helen had her own psychology. This "killing of nerves" for the good of talent, was quite philosophical, if a trifle vague in the abstract. Jane bethought herself a nerveless career was, indeed, idealistic.
"But what has happened just now?" pressed Jane. "What has Marian been doing to so distress you?"
Helen sank again into an attitude of polite concentration. She even smiled into the gray eyes that compelled her love, and confidence.
"I was out in the far grove, under the trees," she began. "I go there to hear the wild wind shriek and wail, so I may make those notes on my violin. Last night the wind howled like some awful frightened spirit, and I knew our masters made their wonderful music from such inspiration. I was sitting in a low branch, the wind rocked me like a playmate, and up in the trees, those shrieking, wonderful notes, oh--if I can only catch them!" she paused, and in the interval Jane visioned Helen up in that tree--as Judith would have said, "she had a life-sized picture" of the girl and her violin, in the tree, under the shrieking night winds, strong enough last night to blow girl and violin into realms of inspiration she so coveted. Presently as Jane nodded:
"It was too lovely to be there, and gently draw from my beloved violin the echo of that wind music. But the hateful girl! She had followed, and when I was so happy, with one magic strain, when she laughed out loud, horrible! She hissed and--made the noise to destroy my inspiration, to frighten away my beloved notes, and their little graces."
"Oh, that was too bad, surely, Helen," considered the rather bewildered Jane. She knew very well what effect the "movie" in the tree would naturally have on a girl like Marian. "But you must understand she knows nothing of the art or its inspirations," finished Jane.
"That I know also, and I could forgive the ignorance. But she mocks me," declared the unhappy girl, "she says vile things--she says--I am--mad!"
"Oh!"
That was it! Marian had taunted Helen with being mad! This was really serious, and Jane showed her apprehension by a complete silence. To prevent the little foreigner from a precipitous withdrawal from Wellington was now her problem.