"Mr. Digby, nobody could paint water, could they?"
"Yes."
"How could they? It is all changing, every instant; it won't stand still to be drawn."
"Most things can be done, if one is only in earnest enough."
"But how can this?"
"Not without a great deal of study and pains. A man must watch the play of the waves and the shapes they take, and the colours of the different parts in any given sort of weather, until he has got them by heart; and then he can put the lines and the colours on the canvas. If he has the gift to do it, that is."
"What has the weather to do with it? Different colours?"
"Certainly. The lights and shadows vary with every change of the sky; and the colours vary."
"Then a person must be very much in earnest," said Rotha, "ever to get it all."
"There is no doing great things in any line without being very much in earnest. The start isn't the thing; it is the steady pull that tries."