d done, these matters
sometimes had the power of making her very miserable.

His happiest achievements resulted from sketching trips taken to
points she knew in the hills. He had called her a dryad when she first
appeared in the woods, and he had been right, for she knew all the
twisting paths in the tangle of the knobs, unbroken and virgin save
where the orchards of peach-growers had reclaimed bits of sloping
soil. One morning at the end of June, they started out together on
horseback, armed with painting paraphernalia, luncheon and rubber
ponchos in the event of rain. For this occasion, she had saved a coign
of vantage she knew, where his artist's eye might swing out from a
shelving cliff over miles of checkered valley and flat, and league
upon league of cloud and sky. She led the way by zigzag hill roads
where they caught stinging blows from back-lashing branches and up
steep, slippery acclivities. It was one of the times when Saxon was
drinking the pleasant nectar of to-day, refusing to think of
to-morrow. She sang as she rode in advance, and he followed with the
pleasure of a man to whom being unmounted brings a sense of
incompleteness. He knew that he rode no better than she--and he knew
that he could ride. In his ears was the exuberance of the birds
saluting the morning, and in his nostrils the loamy aroma stirred by
their horses' hoofs from the steeping fragrance of last year's leaves.
At the end was a view that brought his breath in deep draughts of
delight.

For two hours, he worked, and only once his eyes left the front. On
that occasion, he glanced back to see her slim figure stretched with
childlike and unconscious grace in the long grass, her eyes gazing
unblinkingly and thoughtfully up to the fleece that drifted across the
blue of the sky. Clover heads waved fragrantly about her, and one
long-stemmed blossom brushed her cheek. She did not see him, and the
man turned his gaze back to the canvas with a leap in his pulses.
After that, he painted feverishly. Finally, he turned to find her at
his elbow.

"What is the verdict?" he demanded.

She looked with almost tense eyes. Her voice was low and thrilled with
wondering delight.

"There is something," she said slowly, "that you never caught before;
something wonderful, almost magical. I don't know what it is."

With a swift, uncontrollable gesture, he bent a little toward her. His
face was the face of a man whose heart is in insurrection. His voice
wa