The Moon out of Reach | Page 4

and, laying her hands on the girl's shoulders,
twisted her round so that she faced her.
"Nan, it's sheer madness! You've got this wonderful talent--a real gift
of the gods--and you do nothing with it!"
Nan laughed uncertainly and bent her bead so that all Penelope could
see was a cloud of dusky hair.
"I can't," she said.
"Why not?" Penelope's voice was urgent. "Why don't you work up that
last composition, for instance, and get it published? Surely"--giving her
a little wrathful shake--"surely you've some ambition?"
"Do you remember what that funny old Scotch clairvoyant said to
me? . . . 'You have ambition--great ambition--but not the stability or
perseverance to achieve.'"
Penelope's level brows contracted into a frown and she shook her head
dissentingly.
"It's true--every word of it," asserted Nan.
The other dropped her hands from Nan's shoulders and turned away.
"You'll break everyone's heart before you've finished," she said.
Adding in a lighter tone: "I'm going out now. If Maryon Rooke comes,
don't begin by breaking his for him."
The door closed behind her and Nan, left alone, strolled restlessly over
to the window and stood looking out.
"Break his!" she whispered under her breath. "Dear old Penny! She
doesn't know the probabilities in this particular game of chance."

The slanting afternoon sunlight revealed once more that sudden touch
of gravity--almost of fear--in her face. It was rather a charming face,
delicately angled, with cheeks that hollowed slightly beneath the
cheek-bones and a chin which would have been pointed had not old
Dame Nature changed her mind at the last moment and elected to put a
provoking little cleft there. Nor could even the merciless light of a
wintry sun find a flaw in her skin. It was one of those rare, creamy
skins, with a golden undertone and the feature of a flower petal,
sometimes found in conjunction with dark hair. The faint colour in her
cheeks was of that same warm rose which the sun kisses into glowing
life on the velvet skin of an apricot.
The colour deepened suddenly in her face as the sound of an electric
bell trilled through the flat. Dropping her arms to her sides, she stood
motionless, like a bird poised for flight. Then, with a little impatient
shrug of her shoulders, she made her way slowly, almost unwillingly,
across the hall and threw open the door.
"You, Maryon?" she said a trifle breathlessly. Then, as he entered: "I--I
hardly expected you."
He took both her hands in his and kissed them.
"It's several years since I expected anything," he answered. "Now--I
only hope."
Nan smiled.
"Come in, pessimist, and don't begin by being epigrammatic on the
very doorstep. Tea? Or coffee? I'm afraid the flat doesn't run to
whisky-and-soda."
"Coffee, please--and your conversation--will suffice. 'A Loaf of
Bread . . . and Thou beside me singing in the Wilderness' . . ."
"You'd much prefer a whisky-and-soda and a grilled steak to the loaf
and--the et ceteras," observed Nan cynically. "There's a very wide gulf
between what a man says and what he thinks."

"There's a much wider one between what a man wants and what he
gets," he returned grimly.
"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."
Nan smiled involuntarily.
"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!"
"What's the crime?"
"Lack of application, waste of opportunities, and general idleness."

"It's all true."