"I don't know," she answered, with hysterical flippancy. "If I did I would tell you."
He laughed, as if he liked her flippancy, and he said, "It's very simple. In fact, that's what makes it so difficult."
"Then you might practice on something hard first," she suggested wildly. "How would the weather do?"
"Yes, hasn't it been beautiful?" said Ludlow, with an involuntary lapse into earnestness. "I was in the Park to-day for a little effect I wanted to get, and it was heartbreaking to leave the woods. I was away up in those forest depths that look wild in spite of the asphalt. If you haven't been there, you must go some day while the autumn color lasts. I saw a lot of your Synthesis ladies painting there. I didn't know but I might see you."
This was all very matter of fact. Cornelia took herself in hand, and shook herself out of her hallucination. "No, I don't suppose it would be right for a person who was merely in the Preparatory to go sketching in the Park. And Charmian and I were very good to-day, and kept working away at our block hands as long as the light lasted."
"Ah, yes; Miss Maybough," said Ludlow; then he paused absently a moment. "Do you think she is going to do much in art?"
"How should I know?" returned Cornelia. She thought it rather odd he should recur to that after she had let him see she did not want to talk about Charmian's art.
"Because you know that you can do something yourself," said Ludlow. "That is the only kind of people who can really know. The other sort of people can make clever guesses; they can't know."
"And you believe that I can do something?" asked Cornelia, and a sudden revulsion of feeling sent the tears to her eyes. It was so sweet to be praised, believed in, after what she had been through. "But you haven't seen anything of mine except those things—in the Fair House."
"Oh, yes, I have. I've seen the drawings you submitted at the Synthesis. I've just seen them. I may as well confess it: I asked to see them."