or weeks. It may be
dismissed here with the simple statement that the mystery has never been
solved.

Of the unknown man who had taken Sibyl away into the mountains, and who
had escaped, the world has never heard. Of the convict who died but did
not die in the hills, the world knows nothing. That is, the world knows
nothing of the man in this connection. But Aaron and Sibyl, some years
later, knew what became of Henry Marston--which does not, at all, belong
to this story.

Upon his return with Conrad Lagrange to their home in the orange groves,
Aaron King plunged into his work with a purpose very different from the
motive that had prompted him when first he took up his brushes in the
studio that looked out upon the mountains and the rose garden.

Day after day, as he gave himself to his great picture,--"The Feast of
Materialism,"--he knew the joy of the worker who, in his art, surrenders
himself to a noble purpose--a joy that is very different from the light,
passing pleasure that comes from the mere exercise of technical skill. The
artist did not, now, need to drive himself to his task, as the begging
musician on the street corner forces himself to play to the passing crowd,
for the pennies that are dropped in his tin cup. Rather was he driven by
the conviction of a great truth, and by the realization of its woeful need
in the world, to such adequate expression as his mastery of the tools of
his craft would permit He was not, now, the slave of his technical
knowledge; striving to produce a something that should be merely
technically good. He was a master, compelling the medium of his art to
serve him; as he, in turn, was compelled to serve the truth that had
mastered him.

Sometimes, with Conrad Lagrange, he went for an evening hour to the little
house next door. Sometimes Sibyl and Myra Willard would drop in at the
studio, in the afternoon. The girl never, now, came alone. But every day,
as the artist worked, the music of her violin came to him, out of the
orange grove, with its message from the hills. And the painter at his
easel, reading aright the message, worked and waited; knowing surely that
when she was ready she would come.

Letters from Mrs. Taine were frequent. Aaron King, reading them--nearly
always under the quizzing eyes of Conrad Lagrange, whose custom it was to
bring the daily mail--carefully tore them into little pieces and dropped
them into the waste basket, without comment.

Once, the novelist