There's not much reality, I admit, in his portrait of Lord
Roberts or his beautiful pink and blue mackerel with its high light,
that never shone on land or sea, except on the scales of that fish;
there's not much reality in them, when they're finished, but there's
a hell of a lot of it in the doing of them."
He sat and puffed at his pipe, while she remained standing, looking
down into the fire.
The silence was long, then it was broken abruptly. A knock rattled
gently on the door. It was soft, timid, but it rushed violently
through their silence. Traill slid to his feet. His sister stood
erect. Her eyes fastened to his face, and she watched him calculating
the possibilities, as if he were counting them on his fingers, of
whom it might be.
Then it came again.
"Who do you think it is?" she whispered. She was beginning already
to shrink at the thought that some woman had come to see him. He heard
that in her voice and casually smiled.
"It's all right," he said quietly. "I shan't let any one in who'd
offend your sense of propriety. However I talk, we're related. Stay
there."
She watched him cross to the door; turned, so that she could still
observe him and yet with one twist of the head, if any one entered,
seem to have been untouched by any curiosity.
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