"Not without a great deal of study and pains. A man must watch the play of the waves and the shapes they take, and the colours of the different parts in any given sort of weather, until he has got them by heart; and then he can put the lines and the colours on the canvas. If he has the gift to do it, that is." "What has the weather to do with it? Different colours?" "Certainly. The lights and shadows vary with every change of the sky; and the colours vary." "Then a person must be very much in earnest," said Rotha, "ever to get it all." "There is no doing great things in any line without being very much in earnest. The start isn't the thing; it is the steady pull that tries." "Can you draw, Mr. Digby?" "Yes, a little." Again Rotha was all absorbed in what lay before and around her; getting unconscious education through her eyes, as they received for the first time the images of so many new things. To the people on board she gave scarcely any heed at all. Arrived at Brighton, Mr. Digby's first care was to give his charge and himself some refreshment. He took Rotha to a hotel and ordered a simple dinner. Then he desired to have a little wagon harnessed up, and putting the delighted girl into it, he drove to the sea shore and let her feast her eyes on the incoming waves and breaking surf. He himself was full of one thought, waiting for the moment when he could say to her what he had to say; but he was forced to wait a good while. He had made a mistake, he found, in choosing this precise direction for their drive. Rotha's overwhelming pleasure and entranced absorption for some time could not be broken in upon. She was too utterly happy to notice how different was her friend's absorption from her own; unless with a vague, passing perception, which she could not dwell upon.