A gentle voice fell upon the darkness. “Do you know, Mr. Pulford,” it murmured, “I felt sure that you were an artist, the very first time I saw you.”
Marsena heaved a long sigh—a sigh with a tremulous catch in it, as where sorrow and sweet solace should meet. “I did start out to be one,” he answered, “but I—I never amounted to anything at it. I tried for years, but I wasn’t any good. I had to give it up—at last—and take to this instead.”
He lifted the plate with caution, bent to look obliquely across its surface, and lowered it again. Then all at once he turned abruptly and faced her. They were so close to each other that even in the obscure gloom she caught the sudden flash of resolution in his eyes.
“I’ll tell you what I never told any other living soul,” he said, beginning with husky eagerness, but lapsing now into grave deliberation of emphasis: “I hate—this—like pizen!”
In the silence which followed, Marsena mechanically took the plate from the bath, fastened it in the holder, and stepped to the door. Then he halted, to prolong for one little instant this tender spell of magic which had stolen over him. Here, in the close darkness beside him, was a sorceress, a siren, who had at a glance read his sore heart’s deepest secret—at a word drawn the confession of his maimed and embittered pride. It was like being shut up with an angel, who was also a beautiful woman. Oh, the wonder of it! Broad sunlit landscapes with Italian skies seemed to be forming themselves before his mind’s eye; his soul sang songs within him. He very nearly dropped the plate-holder.
The soft, hovering, half touch of a hand upon his arm, the cool, restful tones of the voice in the darkness, came to complete the witchery.
“I know,” she said, “I can sympathize with you. I also had my dreams, my aspirations. But you are wrong to think that you have failed. Why, this beautiful work of yours, it all is Art—pure Art. No person who really knows could look at it and not see that. No, Mr. Pulford, you do yourself an injustice; believe me, you do. Why, you couldn’t help being an artist if you tried; it’s born in you. It shows in everything you do. I saw it from the very first.”
The unmistakable sound of Dwight Ransom’s large artillery boots moving on the floor outside intervened here, and Marsena hurriedly opened the door. The Lieutenant glanced with good-natured raillery at the couple who stood revealed, blinking in the sharp light.
“One of my legs got asleep,” he remarked, by way of explanation, “so I had to get up and stamp around. I began to think,” he added, “that you folks were going to set up housekeeping in there, and not come out any more at all.”
“Don’t be vulgar, if you please,” said Julia Par-malee, with a dash of asperity in what purported to be a bantering tone. “We were talking of matters quite beyond you—of Art, if you desire to know. Mr. Pulford and I discover that we have a great many opinions and sentiments about Art in common. It is a feeling that no one can understand unless they have it.”