me what I'd been reaching through
the darkness of my novitiate to grasp. It seemed to me that art had
been revealed to me. Somehow," the man added, his voice falling
suddenly from its enthused pitch to a dead, low one, "everything that
comes to me seems to come by revelation!"

Into Duska's eyes came quick light of sympathy. He had halted before
her, and now she arose impulsively, and laid a light hand for a moment
on his arm.

"I understand," she agreed. "I think that for most artists to come as
close as you have come would be triumph enough, but you--" she looked
at him a moment with a warmth of confidence--"you can do a great deal
more." So ended her first lesson in the independence of art, leaving
the pupil's heart beating more quickly than at its commencement.

In the days that followed, as May gave way to June and the dogwood
blossoms dropped and withered to be supplanted by flowering locust
trees, Saxon confessed to himself that he had lost the first battle of
his campaign. He had resolved that this close companionship should be
platonically hedged about; that he would never allow himself to cross
the frontier that divided the realm of friendship from the hazardous
territory of love. Then, as the cool, unperfumed beauty of the dogwood
was forgotten for the sense-steeping fragrance of the locust, he knew
that he was only trying to deceive himself. He had really crossed this
forbidden frontier when he passed through the gate that separated the
grandstand at Churchill Downs from the club-house inclosure. With the
realization came the resolution of silence. He was a man whose life
might at any moment renew itself in untoward developments. Until he
could drag the truth from the sphinx that guarded his secret, his love
must be as inarticulate as was his sphinx. He spent harrowing
afternoons alone, and swore with many solemn oaths that he would
never divulge his feelings, and, when he sought about for the most
sacred and binding of vows, he swore by his love for Duska.

Because of these things, he sometimes shocked and startled her with
sporadic demonstrations of the brusquerie into which he withdrew when
he felt too potential an impulse urging him to the other extreme. And
she, not understanding it, yet felt that there was some riddle behind
it all. It pained and puzzled her, but she accepted it without
resentment--belying her customary autocracy. While she had never gone
into the confessional of her heart as he ha