his girl comrade
on the mountain top.

"Please"--she said, meeting his serious gaze with a smile of frank
fellowship--"please, what have I done?"

Smiling, he answered gravely, "I don't exactly know--but you have done
something."

"You look so serious. I'm sure it must be pretty bad. Can't you think what
it is?"

He laughed. "I was thinking about down there"--he pointed into the haze of
the distant valley to the west.

"Don't," she returned, "let's think about up here"--she waved her hand
toward the high crest of the San Bernardinos, and the mountain peaks about
them.

"Will you let me paint your portrait--when we get back to the orange
groves?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know," she returned. "Why do you want to paint me? I'm
nobody, you know--but just me."

"That's the reason I want to paint you," he answered.

"What's the reason?"

"Because you are you."

"But a portrait of me would not help you on your road to fame," she
retorted.

He flinched. "Perhaps," he said, "that's partly why I want to do it."

"Because it won't help you?"

"Because it won't help me on the road to fame. You _will_ pose for me,
won't you?"

"I'm sure I cannot say"--she answered--"perhaps--please don't let's talk
about it."

"Why not?" he asked curiously.

"Because"--she answered seriously--"we have been such good friends up here
in the mountains; such--such comrades. Up here in the hills, with the
canyon gates shut against the world that I don't know, you are like--like
Brian Oakley--and like my father used to be--and down there"--she
hesitated.

"Yes," he said, "and down there I will be what?"

"I don't know," she answered wistfully, "but sometimes I can see you going
on and on and on toward fame and the rewards it will bring you and you
seem to get farther and farther and farther away from--from the mountains
and our friendship; until you are so far away that I can't see you any
more at all. I don't like to lose my mountain friends, you know."

He smiled. "But no matter how famous I might become--no matter what fame
might bring me--I could not forget you and your mountains."

"I would not want you to remember me," she answered "if you were famous.
That is--I mean"--she added hesitatingly--"if you were famous just because
you _wanted_ to be. But I know you could never forget the mountains. And
that would be the trouble; don't you see? If you _could_ forget, it would
not matter. Ask Mr. Lagrange, he knows."

Fo