“No, do not write, tell me now,” said Brooke, wondering if the chill that seized upon her spirit had its source from without or from within.
“Then I will tell you if you will listen to the end.” Brooke nodded assent.
Maarten drew nearer, and half sitting, half leaning against the bank, told his story.
“When I met you in the Paris studios, it was five years after I had turned my back on England and the commercial life my father’s brother, a London Hollander, had planned for me. I belonged in an art country, and its traditions held me in its grip, not to be broken. I had fought my way along and worked steadily, first at home, earning some praise, and yet always when I felt success coming toward me, it passed me by. At first I thought you one of the great flock of those young women who dabble at art, as an excuse for greater liberty,—soon I learned better. You were kind and frank; you never seemed to wait for flattery, but rather shrank from it. Presently I came to think, ‘Here is a woman to whom one may not only tell the truth, but who craves it.’ So I spoke my mind freely, as you remember on that day at Carlo Rossi’s, when, with a dozen others, you were trying to sketch a woman of the street, and catching poise and colouring admirably, the face was still a blank, because you could not fathom the meaning of her expression.”
“Yes, I remember,” Brooke whispered, half introspectively, as with hands clasped over her knee she looked down toward the river.
“I craved your friendship, and you gave it. Then the time came when it was too little for me; and I—what had I to offer? So I kept in the background; my work grew stale, and for the first time I half regretted the five years’ struggle, and might have given up save that, had I done so, my mother’s pride and pinching, that I might become a painter, would have been wasted.
“One day I went with some others from the Quarter to Fontainebleau to sketch out of doors. Three of us had resolved to enter a competition. For a week I had scarcely slept, for somewhere in my brain dwelt a picture, that was growing, yet would not focus. All the morning I had wandered about, and in the early afternoon, leaving the others, I threw myself down under the oaks, quite in despair and wholly miserable.
“Presently I heard a footfall on the grass. Before I could turn, a cluster of cool, golden grapes dropped in my feverish hand, and looking up and backward, I saw your face, and in the smile it wore a ray of light, of inspiration, pierced my soul. Before I had awakened from the vision, you passed on and joined your scolding chaperon.
“As for me, as I lingered there, those grapes became as drops of sacramental wine. I seized my brushes and hastily caught and kept the vision as I saw it—for to me it was the divine awakening.
“For weeks I dreamed and painted as I never had done before. My comrades laughed and said, ‘Is it love or genius?’ and old Rossi shrugged his shoulders and asked, ‘What is the difference?’