'So much the better. Then we can talk just as we used to do. I thought you would somehow remember the girl, Roland.' She looked up again, smiling. Then she hesitated, and went on slowly: 'Yet I was afraid, this morning, that you might have forgotten one of the two who wandered about the island together.'
'I could never forget you, Armorel.'
'I meant—the other—Roland.'
He made no reply. In his evening dress—which was full of creases, as if it had not been put on for a very long time—he looked a little less forlorn than in the shabby old brown-velvet jacket; he had brushed his hair—nay, he had even had it cut and trimmed: but there still hung about him the look of waste: his eyes were melancholy: his bearing was dejected: he spoke with hesitation: he was even shy, like a schoolboy. Effie noted these things, and wondered. And she observed, besides, not only that his coat was creased, but that his shirt was frayed at the cuffs, and torn in the front. In fact, the young man, in dropping out of society, had, as a natural consequence, neglected his wardrobe and allowed his linen to run to seed unrebuked. Every man who has been a bachelor—most of us have—remembers how shirts behave when the eye of the master is once taken off them.
He was shy because the atmosphere of the drawing-room, so dainty, so luxurious, so womanly, was strange to him. Three years and more had passed since he had been in such a room. He was also shy because this splendid creature, this girl dressed in silk and lovely lace, this miracle of girls, called herself Armorel, his once simple rustic maid of Samson Isle. Further, he was ashamed because this girl remembered him as he was in the good old days, when his face was turned to the summit of the mountain and his feet were on the upward slope.
Armorel had placed on the table a portfolio full of drawings.
'Now for myself,' she said, gaily. 'Roland, you are an artist. You must look at my drawings. Here are the best I have done. I have had many masters since you, but none that taught me so much in so short a time. Do you remember when you first found out that I could hold a pencil? You were very patient then, Master. Be lenient now.'
'I had a very apt pupil,' he began, turning over the drawings. 'These need no leniency. These are very good indeed. You have had other and better masters.'
'I have had other masters, it is true. I have done my best, Roland—to grow.'
He dropped his eyes. But he continued to turn over the sketches. The drawings showed, at least, that natural aptitude which may be genius and may be that imitation of genius which is difficult to distinguish from the real gift. Many painters with no more natural aptitude than Armorel have risen to be Royal Academicians.