"I haven't been utterly futile here, as I was in those other circumstances. I have made Cresswell Hepworth's upholstery, stiff houses, 'decorated and furnished by the most expensive and artistic firms,' look really livable and lovely. Truly, haven't I? Great artists have raved over them. Oh, I'm not afraid of velvets and tapestries and embroideries. I have no burgeois reverence for them. Color was always like clay to me. I always long to take it and mold it into new combinations. Why, I couldn't keep my hands off a rainbow if I got a chance at it, even the angels couldn't shoo me away." She was in one of her swift, mercurial changes of mood, her mouth dimpling, her eyes sparkling. "I'm not afraid of all the splendor of color or of all the gorgeously rich materials that God or man ever devised. I ache to take them and combine them and melt them together and contrast them. I'll dare any combination to get an effect I want, an effect that haunts me, and is like music in my consciousness. Isn't it strange that I can do anything I like with great heavy draperies? I wave my hand at them and they fall into just the lines I want. I can get all kinds of effects in a room, but give me a little palette with little gobs of paint on it, and little, little brushes and I can't do even a decent lamp mat. That is one reason Eugene and I have always understood each other so well. He, too, knows the call of color. Oh, stop looking that way, as if I were going straight to shipwreck just because I mention Eugene. The important thing to consider now is what I am going to do."
"I've told you once," said Maud, with settled conviction; "travel."
"On Cresswell's money?" bitterly. "Well, I suppose you think it's either that or huddling into some black hole and attempting to earn my living again--a phrase that's the synonym for me of a cheap and nasty experience, but there must be some way out. No, I am utterly wasted, futile, ineffective. I do not believe, I solemnly do not believe, that I have one single, solitary gift in this world except being pretty."
"Look at me!" said Maud with a rather whimsical, cynical little smile. "I think that I'm the living proof of one of your especial gifts. Why, Dita, my dear, I'm a creation of yours. I'm considered one of the most stunning women in town and about the best dressed and," Maud's really soft and attractive smile transfixed her face, "I've won, I am really beginning to dare to believe it, the interest and I hope the affection of the only man I ever cared for and who never gave me a glance when I was just 'that plain Maud Carmine, who is musical, you know.' Oh, I mean Wallace, of course," blushing. "I haven't got over the wonder of it yet, I assure you. I'm still mentally pinching myself and saying, 'If this be I.' Think of it, Dita! I know the treasures of the socially humble, if any one does. I always had position, but that amounts to very little in these days, unless one has other things to back it up. It has been gradually losing importance, pushed to the wall by money, the ability to entertain, personal charm and good clothes, an air, a flare, a wit; until now the poor, solemn, superannuated thing, so long unduly revered, is really trotted back into the corner. Yes, I had position, but not recognition. The back seats for me, so I rubbed along on my music and conversation as best I could, poor fool! And then you came, and waved your magic wand over me, took me in hand, and the world began to appraise me at your valuation."