Once a day, however, she took out a writing-block, and traced upon it the
words, "My dear Jack, I think I ought to tell you--" or a similar
exordium. She got no further. How could she tell him that without telling
him more? And how tell him more when, of her own accord, she had sent him
about his business, and set her approval upon his marriage, or what must
be considered his marriage? An instinct forbade her. She didn't reason
with it: her reason was paralysed. "It's part of the price. It's what he
would have praised me for"--and she flew to her text.
"_A great power is in your thin sweet hands, my sweet; you are in the way
of being a great artist._" She looked at her hands, and loved them for his
sake who had loved them so well. Her "thin sweet hands!" Could one write
so of her hands and not love them well?
But the power, the power that she had! Hear her rhapsodist. _"If you can
so work upon your delicate surface as to mould it close to your noble
soul; if in the gallery of the world you can unveil yourself for a
thousand pair of eyes to see, and praise God for the right to see--why,
what an artist you are, and what an audience you have! ... Like a whiff of
thyme on a grassy down, like the breath of violets from a bank, or of
bean-flower blown across a dusty hedge, some gentle exhalation of your
soul sighed through your body will hint to the passion-driven wretch
things innocent and quiet.
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