She had loved to read, as she grew older, of Giotto, the little Italian boy trying to mix colors from brick dust, or drawing with charcoal on the stones of the field where Cimabue the monk walked in meditation; of the world that was just full of romance, full of stories ages old and still full of vivid life.
Once she had read of Albrecht Durer, painting his masterpieces while he starved. How the people told in whispers after his death that he had used his heart’s blood to mix with his wonderful pigments. Of course it was all only a story, but Jean remembered it. When she saw a picture that seemed to hold one and speak its message of beauty, she would say to herself,
“There is Durer’s secret.”
And some day, if she ever could put on canvas the dreams that came to her, she meant to use the same secret.
“I think,” said Kit, yawning and stretching her arms out in a perfect ecstasy of relaxation after a bout with her Latin, “I do think Socrates was an old bore. Always mixing in and contradicting everybody and starting something. No wonder his wife was cranky.”
“He died beautifully,” Helen mused. “Something about a sunset and all his friends around him, and didn’t he owe somebody a chicken and tell his friends to pay for it?”
“You’re sleepy. Go to bed, both of you,” Jean told them laughingly. “I’ll put out the light and fasten the doors.”
She finished her letter alone. It was not easy to write it. Bab wanted her to come down for the spring term. She could board with her if she liked. Expenses were very light.
Any expenses would be heavy if piled on the monthly budget of Greenacres. Jean knew that. So she wrote back with a heartache behind the plucky refusal, and stepped out on the moonlit veranda for a minute. It was clear and cold after the light snowfall. The stars were very faint. From the river came the sound of the waterfall, and up in the big white barn, Princess giving her stall a goodnight kick or two before settling down.
“You stand steady, Jean Robbins,” she said, between her teeth. “Don’t you dare be a quitter. You stand steady and see this winter straight through.”