She stared, bewildered. Philippa, who was beside her looking at the pictures, went on talking without observing the sheer amazement in Armorel's eyes.
'That was his first picture,' she continued; 'and this was the second. I remember very well the little speech he made while we were all crowding round the picture. "I am going," he said, "to make a new departure. You all thought I was just following the beaten road at the Bar. Well, I am trying a new and a shorter way to success. You see my first effort." It was difficult to believe our eyes. Alec a painter? One might as well have expected to find Alec a poet: and in a few months he was a poet: and then a story-teller. And his poetry is as good as it is made in these days; and his short stories are as good as any of those by the French writers.'
'What is the subject of this picture?' Armorel asked with an effort.
'The place is somewhere on the Cornish coast, I believe. He always paints the same kind of picture—always a rocky coast—a tossing sea—perhaps a boat—spray flying over the rocks—and always a girl, the same girl. There she is in both pictures—a handsome black-haired girl, quite young—it might be almost a portrait of yourself when you were younger, Armorel.'
'Almost,' said Armorel.
'This girl is now as well known to Alec's friends as Wouvermann's white horse. But no one knows the model.'
Armorel's memory went back to the day when Roland made that sketch. She stood—so—just as the painter had drawn her, on a round boulder, the water boiling and surging at her feet and the white foam running up. Behind her the granite rock, grey and black. How could she ever forget that sketch?
'Alec is wonderful in his seas,' Philippa went on. 'Look at the bright colour and the clear transparency of the water. You can feel it rolling at your feet. Upon my word, Armorel, the girl is really like you.'
'A little, perhaps. Yes; they are good pictures, Philippa. The man who painted them is a painter indeed.'
She sat down again, still bewildered.