st appeared. "You seem to be the bearer of news. What is the
latest word from the seat of war?"

"It is finished," said Conrad Lagrange, returning Myra's gentle greeting,
and accepting the chair that Sibyl offered.

"The picture?" said the girl eagerly, a quick color flushing her cheeks.
"Is the picture finished?"

"Finished," returned the novelist. "I just left him mooning over it like a
mother over a brand-new baby."

They laughed together, and when, a moment later, the girl slipped into the
house and did not return, the woman with the disfigured face and the
famous novelist looked at each other with smiling eyes. When Czar, with
sudden interest, started around the corner of the house, his master said
suggestively, "Czar, you better stay here with the old folks."

Passing through the house, and out of the kitchen door, Sibyl ran,
lightly, through the orange grove, to the little gate in the corner of the
Ragged Robin hedge. A moment she paused, hesitating, then, stealing
cautiously into the rose garden, she darted in quick flight to the shelter
of the arbor; where she parted the screen of vines to gain a view of the
studio.

Between the big, north window and the window that opened into the garden,
she saw the artist. She saw, too, the big canvas upon the easel. But Aaron
King was not, now, looking at his work just finished. He was sitting
before that other picture into which he had unconsciously painted, not
only the truth that he saw in the winsome loveliness of the girl who posed
for him with outstretshed hands among the roses, but his love for her as
well.

With a low laugh, Sibyl drew back. Swiftly, as she had reached the arbor,
she crossed the garden, and a moment later, paused at the studio door.
Again she hesitated--then, gently,--so gently that the artist, lost in his
dreams, did not hear,--she opened the door. For a little, she stood
watching him. Softly, she took a few steps toward him. The artist, as
though sensing her presence, started and looked around.

She was standing as she stood in the picture; her hands outstretched, a
smile of welcome on her lips, the light of gladness in her eyes.

As he rose from his chair before the easel, she went to him.

* * * * *

Not many days later, there was a quiet wedding, at Sibyl's old home in the
hills. Besides the two young people and the clergyman, only Brian Oakley,
Mrs. Oakley, Conrad Lagrange and Myra Willard were presen