And it merely quickened her meditations on this point that Felix should declare, as he repeatedly did, that he was really not an artist.

"I have never gone into the thing seriously," he said.

"I have never studied; I have had no training.

I do a little of everything, and nothing well.

I am only an amateur." It pleased Gertrude even more to think that he was an amateur than to think that he was an artist; the former word, to her fancy, had an even subtler connotation.