He was already a man with a profession, and meant that she should
become aware of it.
* * * * *
Later in the evening somebody told her what a personage he had
become, and she became even more deeply thrilled, impressed, and
tremulously desirous that he should seek her out again, not venturing
to seek him, not dreaming of encouraging him to notice her by glance
or attitude--not even knowing, as yet, how to do such things. She
thought he had already forgotten her existence.
But that this thin, freckled young thing with grey eyes ought to
learn how much of a man he was remained somewhere in the back of
Neeland's head; and when he heard his hostess say that somebody would
have to see Rue Carew home, he offered to do it. And presently went
over and asked the girl if he might--not too patronisingly.
In the cutter, under fur, with the moonlight electrically brilliant
and the world buried in white, she ventured to speak of his art,
timidly, as in the presence of the very great.
"Oh, yes," he said. "I studied in Paris. Wish I were back there. But
I've got to draw for magazines and illustrated papers; got to make a
living, you see. I teach at the Art League, too."
"How happy you must be in your career!" she said, devoutly meaning it,
knowing no better than to say it.
"It's a business," he corrected her, kindly.
"But--yes--but it is art, too."
"Oh, art!" he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art
was mentioned--reaction from too much gabble.
"We don't busy ourselves with art; we busy ourselves with business.
When they use my stuff I feel I'm getting on. You see," he admitted
with reluctant honesty, "I'm young at it yet--I haven't had very much
of my stuff in magazines yet."
After a silence, cursed by an instinctive truthfulness which always
spoiled any little plan to swagger: "I've had several--well, about a dozen pictures reproduced."
One picture accepted by any magazine would have awed her sufficiently.
The mere fact that he was an artist had been enough to impress her.
"Do you care for that sort of thing--drawing, painting, I mean?" he
inquired kindly.
She drew a quick breath, steadied her voice, and said she did.
"Perhaps you may turn out stuff yourself some day."
She scarcely knew how to take the word "stuff." Vaguely she surmised
it to be professional vernacular.
She admitted shyly that she cared for nothing so much as drawing, that
she longed for instruction, but that such a dream was hopeless.