every line, and the
girl as she read it fell to musing on the singularity of the situation.
He was in her mind very often, now; the romance and the poetry of the
work he was doing began at last to appeal to her, and the knowledge that
she, in a sense, shared the possibilities with him, was distinctly
pleasurable. She had perception enough to feel also the force of the
contrast in their lives, he toiling thanklessly on a barren, sun-smit
land, in effort to lead a subject race to self-supporting freedom, while
she, dabbling in art for art's sake, sat in a secure place and watched
him curiously.

"How well he writes," she thought, returning to his letter. His
sentences clutched her like strong hands, and she could not escape them.
As she read she drew again the splendid lines of his head in profile,
and then, a sentence later, it seemed that he was looking straight into
her eyes, grave of countenance, involved in some moral question whose
solution he considered essential to his happiness and to the welfare of
his people. Surely he was a most uncommon soldier. When she had finished
reading she was sincerely moved to reply. She had nothing definitely in
mind to say, and yet somehow she visualized him at his desk waiting an
answer. "The worst of it is, we seem to have no topic in common except
his distressing Indians," she said, as she returned to her work. "Even
art to him means painting the redmen sympathetically."

But he could not be put aside. He was narrow and one-sided, but he was
sincere and manly--and handsome. That was the very worst of it; he was
too attractive to be forgotten. Therefore she took up her pen again,
being careful to keep close to artistic motives. She spoke of the
success of her spring exhibition, and said: "It has confirmed me in the
desire to go on valiantly in the same line. That is the reason I am
coming back to the Tetongs. I feel that I begin to know
them--artistically, I mean; not as you know them--and I need your
blazing sunlight to drink up the fogs that I brought from Holland and
Belgium. The prismatic flare of color out there pleases me. It's just
the white ray split into its primary colors, but I can get it. I'm going
to do more of those canvases of the moving figure blended with the
landscape; they make a stunning technical problem in vibration as well
as in values; and then the critics shout over them, too. I sold the one
you liked so well, and also five portraits, and feel vastly enc