"Tell me how you're unhappy, and how you've been disappointed," said Brian. "Then perhaps we can find the right flowers to cure you, in the garden."
So she told him what Julian had told me: about trying to get on the stage, and not succeeding, and realizing that she couldn't act; feeling that there was no vocation, no place for her anywhere. To comfort the girl, Brian opened the gate of his garden of the blind, and gave her its secrets, as he has given them to me. He explained to her his trick of "seeing across far spaces," with the eyes of his mind, and heart: saying aloud, to himself, names of glorious places--"Athens--Rome--Venice," and going there in the airship of imagination; calling up visions of rose-sunset light on the yellowing marble of the Acropolis, or moonlight in the Pincian gardens, with great umbrella-pines like blots of ink on steel, or the opal colours shimmering deep down, under the surface of the Grand Canal. He made Dierdre understand his way of "listening to a landscape," knowing by the voice of the wind what trees it touched; the buzz of olive leaves bunched like hives of silver bees against the blue; the sea-murmur of pines; the skeleton swish of palms; the gay, dancing rustle of poplars. And he showed her how he gathered beauty and colour from words, which made pictures in his brain.
"I never thought of all these things when I could see pictures with my _eyes_--and paint them with my hands," he said. And perhaps he gave a sigh for the past, which touched Dierdre's heart as the wind, in his fancy, touched the trees. "Couldn't you use your old knowledge, and learn to paint without seeing?" she asked. "You might have a line for the horizon, and with someone to mix your colours under your directions--someone who'd tell you where to find the reds, where the greens, and so on, someone to warn you if you went wrong. You might make wonderful effects."
"I've thought of that," said Brian. "I've hoped--it might be. Sometime, when this trip is over, I may ask my sister's help----"
"Oh, your sister's!" Dierdre broke in. "But she may marry. Or she may go back to nursing again. I wish I could help you. It would make me happy. It would be helping myself, more than you! And we could begin soon. I could buy you paints from a list you'd give me. If we succeeded, you could surprise your sister and the Becketts. It would be splendid."