d for
his life work; and when, receiving his inheritance, he had made his solemn
promise that the purpose and passion of his mother's years of sacrifice
should, in him and in his work, be fulfilled. One by one, he retraced the
steps that had led to his understanding that only a true and noble art
could ever make good that promise. Not by winning the poor notice of the
little passing day, alone; not by gaining the applause of the thoughtless
crowd; not by winning the rewards bestowed by the self-appointed judges
and patrons of the arts; but by a true, honest, and fearless giving of
himself in his work, regardless alike of praise or blame--by saying the
thing that was given him to say, because it was given him to say--would he
keep that which his mother had committed to him. As mile after mile of the
distance that lay between him and the girl he loved was put behind him in
his race to her side, it was given him to understand--as never
before--how, first the friendship of the world-wearied man who had,
himself, profaned his art; and then, the comradeship of that one whose
life was so unspotted by the world; had helped him to a true and vital
conception of his ministry of color and line and brush and canvas.

It was twilight when the artist reached the spot where the road crosses
the tumbling stream--the spot where he and Conrad Lagrange had slept at
the foot of the mountains. Where the road curves toward the creek, the
man, without checking his pace, turned his head to look back upon the
valley that, far below, was fast being lost in the gathering dusk. In its
weird and gloomy mystery,--with its hidden life revealed only by the
sparkling, twinkling lights of the towns and cities,--it was suggestive,
now, to his artist mind, of the life that had so nearly caught him in its
glittering sensual snare. A moment later, he lifted his eyes to the
mountain peaks ahead that, still in the light of the western sun, glowed
as though brushed with living fire. Against the sky, he could distinguish
that peak in the Galena range, with the clump of pines, where he had sat
with Sibyl Andres that day when she had tried to make him see the train
that had brought him to Fairlands.

He wondered now, as he rode, why he had not realized his love for the
girl, before they left the hills. It seemed to him, now, that his love was
born that evening when he had first heard her violin, as he was fishing;
when he had watched her from the cedar thicket, a