It was Sunday afternoon before I had an opportunity to speak to Jean. We were strolling in secluded paths by the river, with bursts of autumn sunshine falling through a gently rustling canopy of gold and bronze and burnished copper and playing the rich hues of the woodland colors across the radiant mass of Jean's fair hair. She was seventeen now, and my wondering eyes had of late beheld her trim girlishness giving way to the first entrancing curves of womanhood. Her light step, her grace of motion, her clear, pink skin, her sensitive lips half parted over rows of well-formed teeth, her eyes large and dreamful, all whispered in some vague way in the ears of my boyhood that Jean was not as other girls; whispered of Jean the artist—Jean the idealist! Jean had not gone into the mill with the other girls of her age; she had continued longer at school, and then had taken up the study of music. Among the limbo of personalities which drifts into the bywaters of little towns, she had found, too, an artist; a man apparently of talent, who had sought the seclusion of our little milling centre in Ontario for reasons which were his own. He had immediately recognized the artistic strain in the girl and had bent his own genius to call it forth with no thought of reward other than the joy of seeing it grow.
"You are wonderful, Miss Lane," he had said, after the first few lessons. "You have perspective and proportion, which are the greatest things in life."
"I think I am a very stupid pupil," Jean had murmured in answer. "You are very patient with me—and all for nothing."
"For nothing! You leave me your debtor! You pay me a thousand times! You have given back to me a purpose in life—an excuse for being alive! Ah, Miss Lane, you do not know—yet—how empty a life can be. But you are an artist, and some day you will dip your brush in pain—perhaps in sorrow and regret—and after that you will paint. It is the law."
Jean told me these things that Sunday afternoon, and asked me if I knew what he meant. I did not; but I knew the artist had given Jean an instant's glimpse into life, and it was none the easier for me to suggest the loneliness of a homestead "somewhere west of Manitoba."
"Do you think you could dip your brush in—in the Saskatchewan?" I ventured.
She was gazing dreamily across the still river, and in the rich draperies of Autumn which were mirrored at her feet there was no fairer flower than Jean. She was the centre of a painting set against a background of nature's gorgeousness.
"I know," she said, simply. "Jack has told me. I will go, if you—and Marjorie—go."
It seemed to me that the reference to Marjorie came almost as a second thought; at any rate, I flattered myself with that idea.
We had no difficulty in persuading my father and Mrs. Lane to fall in with our ideas; in fact, they accepted our plan with some enthusiasm. Father even insisted upon selling one of the farms and giving the proceeds to establish ourselves in the West. It was little enough, as we were to learn in due course, but Jack and I had also saved something of our earnings, and during this particular fall and winter we were unusually penurious.