"She is too obvious. Anybody can paint a Persian carpet, but one can't put soul into a—carpet——"
He was petulant. "I shall never paint the pictures I want to paint. Life is too short."
"Life isn't short. Look at Grandfather. You will have forty years yet in which to paint."
And now it was he who changed the subject, quickly, as if he were afraid of it.
"My sister is coming to-morrow. I rather think you will like her."
"Will she like me, that's more important."
"She will love you, as I do, as everybody does, Becky."
They had reached that point in ten days that he could say such things to her and win her smile. She did not believe in the least that he loved her. He always laughed when he said it.
She liked him very much. She felt that the Admiral and Tristram and Archibald Cope were all of them the best of comrades. Except for Jane, she had had practically no feminine society since she came. And Jane was not especially inspiring, not like Tristram, who seemed to carry one's imagination back to Viking days.