alf-closing her eyes, gazed at it with uptilted chin resting
on slender fingers. For a time, she did not speak, but the man read
her delight in her eyes. At last, she said, her voice low with
appreciation:

"I love it!"

Turning away to take up a new picture, he felt as though he had
received an accolade.

"It might have been the very spot," she said thoughtfully, "that Senor
Ribero described in his story."

Saxon felt a cloud sweep over the sunshine shed by her praise. His
back was turned, but his face grew suddenly almost gray.

The girl only heard him say quietly:

"Senor Ribero spoke of South America. This was in Yucatan."

When the last canvas had been criticized, Saxon led the girl out to
the shaded verandah.

"Do you know," she announced with severe directness, "when I know you
just a little better, I'm going to lecture you?"

"Lecture me!" His face mirrored alarm. "Do it now--then, I sha'n't
have it impending to terrorize better acquaintance."

She gazed away for a time, her eyes clouding with doubt. At last, she
laughed.

"It makes me seem foolish," she confessed, "because you know so much
more than I do about the subject of this lecture--only," she added
with conviction, "the little I know is right, and the great deal you
know may be wrong."

"I plead guilty, and throw myself on the mercy of the court." He made
the declaration in a tone of extreme abjectness.

"But I don't want you to plead guilty. I want you to reform."

Not knowing the nature of the reform required, Saxon remained
discreetly speechless.

"You are the first disciple of Frederick Marston," she said, going to
the point without preliminaries. "You don't have to be anybody's
disciple. I don't know a great deal about art, but I've stood before
Marston's pictures in the galleries abroad and in this country. I love
them. I've seen your pictures, too, and you don't have to play tag
with Frederick Marston."

For a moment, Saxon sat twisting his pipe in his fingers. His silence
might almost have been an ungracious refusal to discuss the matter.

"Oh, I know it's sacrilege," she said, leaning forward eagerly, her
eyes deep in their sincerity, "but it's true."

The man rose and paced back and forth for a moment, then halted before
her. When he spoke, it was with a ring like fanaticism in his voice.

"There is no Art but Art, and Marston is her prophet. That is my Koran
of the palette." For a while, she said nothing, but shook her