"
"Can you paint?"
"Not yet. But I shall. That's why I've come over here.
I couldn't get what I wanted in London. Perhaps I can here."
"Do you think it's likely that a man will do any good when he
starts at your age? Most men begin painting at eighteen."
"I can learn quicker than I could when I was eighteen."
"What makes you think you have any talent?"
He did not answer for a minute. His gaze rested on the
passing throng, but I do not think he saw it. His answer was
no answer.
"I've got to paint."
"Aren't you taking an awful chance?"
He looked at me. His eyes had something strange in them,
so that I felt rather uncomfortable.
"How old are you? Twenty-three?"
It seemed to me that the question was beside the point.
It was natural that I should take chances; but he was a man whose
youth was past, a stockbroker with a position of
respectability, a wife and two children. A course that would
have been natural for me was absurd for him. I wished to be
quite fair.
"Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter,
but you must confess the chances are a million to one
against it.
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