"You'll soon have all you want," she answered. "You're well on the way to fame already."
"Do you know," he remarked irrelevantly, "your eyes are exactly like blue violets. I'd like to paint you, Nan."
"Perhaps I'll sit for you some day," she replied, handing him his coffee. "That is, if you're very good."
Maryon Rooke was a man the merit of whose work was just beginning to be noticed in the art world. For years he had laboured unacknowledged and with increasing bitterness--for he knew his own worth. But now, though, still only in his early thirties, his reputation, particularly as a painter of women's portraits, had begun to be noised abroad. His feet were on the lower rungs of the ladder, and it was generally prophesied that he would ultimately reach the top. His gifts were undeniable, and there was a certain ruthlessness in the line of the lips above the small Van Dyck beard he wore which suggested that he would permit little to stand in the way of his attaining his goal--be it what it might.
"You'd make a delightful picture, Sun-kissed," he said, narrowing his eyes and using one of his most frequent names for her. "With your blue violet eyes and that rose-petal skin of yours."
"Don't be so flowery, Maryon. Really, you and Penelope are very good antidotes to each other! She's just been giving me a lecture on the error of my ways. She doesn't waste any breath over my appearance, bless her!"
"Lack of application, waste of opportunities, and general idleness."
"It's all true." Rooke leaned forward, his eyes lit by momentary enthusiasm. They were curious eyes--hazel brown, with a misleading softness in them that appealed to every woman he met. "It's all true," he repeated. "You could do big things, Nan. And you do nothing."
"I don't. There are very few pianists who have your technique, and fewer still, your soul and power of interpretation."
"Oh, yes, there are. Heaps. And they've got what I lack."
"You lack that? You who can hold a man--"
"Yes, I can hold one man--or woman. I can play to a few people and hold them. I know that. But--I can't hold a crowd."
Rooke regarded her thoughtfully. Perhaps it was true that in spite of her charm, of the compelling fascination which made her so unforgettable--did he not know how unforgettable!--she yet lacked the tremendous force of magnetic personality which penetrates through a whole concourse of people, temperamentally differing as the poles, and carries them away on one great tidal wave of enthusiasm and applause.