"I'm sick of the sight of those fields!" she exclaimed almost violently. "The same deadly dull green fields day after day. If—if one of them would only turn pink for a change it would be a relief!" Her breath caught in a strangled sob.
Sandy followed her to the window.
"Look here, Nan, you can't go on like this." There was an unaccustomed decision in his tones; the boyish inflection had gone. It was a man who was speaking, and determinedly, too. "You've no business to be everlastingly gazing at green fields. You ought to be turning 'em into music so that the people who've got only bricks and mortar to stare at can get a whiff of them."
Nan gazed at him in astonishment—at this new, surprising Sandy who was talking to her with the forcefulness of a man ten years his senior.
"As for being 'out of it,' as you say," he went on emphatically. "If you are, it's only by your own consent. Anyone who writes as you can need never be out of it. If you'd only do the big stuff you're capable of doing, you'd be 'in it' right enough—half the time confabbing with singers and conductors, and the other half glad to get back to your green fields and the blessed quiet. If you were like me, now—not a damn bit of good because I've no technical knowledge . . ."
In an instant her quick sympathies responded to the note of regret which he could not keep quite out of his voice.
"Sandy, I'm a beast to grouse. It's true—you've had much harder luck." She spoke eagerly, then paused, checked by a sudden piercing memory. "But—but music . . . after all, it isn't the only thing."
"No," he returned cheerfully. "But it will do quite well to go on with. Let's toddle along to the piano and amuse each other."
She nodded, and together they made their way to the West Parlour.
"Have you written anything new?" he asked, turning over some sheets of scribbled, manuscript that were lying on the piano. "Let's hear it."