Each picture was strong, vivid, with its own marked stamp upon it, and a challenging originality was in them all. The tones of colour, the effects of light were marvellous; sunset and dawn, the radiance of the late afternoon, the deep shades of approaching night—all were here rendered in their idealised, sublimated form, showing, as the artist always seeks to show, the essence of beauty.
Regina stood beside him, also looking at the pictures. He divined that she was quite lost in their contemplation, that his own presence for the moment was a secondary thing. This also proves the artist, for to him even the height of passion is less than the height of his artistic attainment.
"What do you think of them?" she asked, after a silence.
"I think they are quite beautiful; they are surprising. You have a magnificent gift."
Regina flushed and trembled with pleasure. Hitherto her art had given her intense joy as she recognised the worth in her creations. But now she felt that intenser joy of bringing it forward to another and seeing its effect on him, for the first time. The praise that we know ourselves is true! What a delight it brings with it. That this man whom she so admired and longed to please should be interested in her work, surprised at its excellence, made her heart beat and her eyes dance.
Everest was greatly interested. An artist himself, he saw directly the difficulties of the subjects she had chosen, and the talent that was necessary to overcome them as she had done. He picked up first one and then another, looking at them from a distance to see the general effect and examining them closely to consider the workmanship, and the girl sat silent, watching him, as he handled her sacred work that was so dear to her and that had never been before any eyes for judgment until now. Her sisters and mother knew that she painted, and had seen her work occasionally in her room, but knowing and caring nothing about such things they had not heeded it.
Now she sat absorbed, watching him and the beautifully coloured work glowing in his hands.
"They are all wonderfully done. As you have had no lessons, and never been taught, it simply means you have a great genius for it," he said, laying down the last sheet and looking over to where she sat, a sweet picture herself in her white dinner dress, gazing so earnestly at him with her lustrous eyes, her rose-hued face supported on her hand, her milky, dimpled elbow leaning on the chair arm.
"I am so glad," she said softly. "I hoped it might be so, for when I go to Exeter and see exhibitions of painting there, and the things they sell in the shops, somehow I feel that mine are—well, different."
"They are quite different, and very much better than the ordinary water-colour—this is a most difficult subject, and perfectly done." He lifted a painting of the enchanted garden. All across the foreground waved boldly the mass of wild flowering tamarisk; admirably thrown back, the garden and its wealth of roses was seen behind and beyond, far off across the hazy blue of the sea burned the sunset sky in softest crimson.