“What is the matter with me?” she said, half aloud. “Is it an illness coming on? or can it be the painting fever? The air seems to sparkle and rush through me like electricity! Oh, why did I not work harder when I had the time? for now if the desire comes I cannot stop,” and Brooke wrung her hands, and then laughed hysterically at her tragic action.
Going to her room, she unpacked palette and paint box, and took the maul stick from the closet, where it had remained all winter tied to some umbrellas. Of canvas she had none, but hunting up some bits of manila board from between her books, she took them to the kitchen and spread them on the table, where she had left the turpentine and oil. What should she try? The snow and rock bit from the window lacked colour and was too harsh in outline to be seductive to her mood. A scarlet geranium in a pot against the dark window frame caught her eye, and seating herself, she began to draw it in rapidly with chalk—anything, if it would only find vent for the fever of action that tingled in her finger tips.
She was surprised to find that a certain accuracy as well as facility of touch had not left her, in spite of stiffened fingers and lack of practice. For her colour sense she claimed no credit; it was born with her. But after the outline took shape and she began to paint and give it texture, she dropped her brush again as the words of Lorenz seemed whispered in her ears, “You have not yet had the awakening, for it you must wait; it is the same with me; you must interpret your vision and see it on the canvas before you can create; but first of all you must know and feel, even if you suffer.”
The awakening had not come to her, and still she waited; did she not now know and feel, and had she not suffered enough? The stiff geranium cramped in its pot bore her no message to interpret, and as a snow-squall darkened her window she cast the brush aside. Shivering at the utter silence of the house, she fled to her room and, throwing herself face downward on her bed, was abandoning herself to the spirits of darkness, when the thought of her other self, radiating light as Lorenz had painted her, crossed her wild mood, checking it, and she lay quite still until her pounding heart calmed to its regular beating, when bodily fatigue claimed its dole and she fell asleep.