ut a ceaseless jargon
while he worked,--an irritating trick caught in the Paris studios. At
the end of the afternoon, he held up a remarkable sketch, suggesting the
color scheme for a picture in the atmosphere of oncoming dusk--a bit of
path over the hill toward the sun.

"You have struck it most certainly," I said. "Be wary of finishing that;
it is strangely suggestive as it is."

He nodded; and then, as we packed up, he said, "Do you know, I have felt
vaguely intimate with this spot, as if I had been here before, as if I
were painting a reminiscence." I remarked tritely on the commonness of
this feeling.

At the bottom of a hillside meadow I was hunting for the entrance of a
path into a patch of woods. Auber, instead of helping me, kept gazing
back at the fading light while he made random observations on the nature
of the sky-line,--one of his cant hobbies. "See how crudely the
character of everything is defined up there against the sky," I heard
him say, while I continued to search for the path. "Now even a sheep or
a cow, or an inanimate thing, like that stone wall, for instance,--see
how its character as a wall comes out as it sweeps over the top." At
this moment, a little drop of surprise in his voice made me look around.
He was walking backwards, one arm extended toward the hill in a
descriptive gesture. "Why, it is the dream!" he murmured in hushed
excitement. "Ah, of course! I might have known it. Now, I'll turn to
find the path."

"I wish you would," I said.

He started abruptly. Then he came slowly, and touched me in a queer
evasive way on my shoulder. Finally he drew a long breath, and gripped
me by the arm. "Don't you recognize it?" "It's the dream! See! The stone
wall--the field--the sumac! Now that's the first sumac--"

"Oh, come along!" I said; "there are twenty such fields. That is
curious, though: you made the gesture. Do you recognize it all exactly?"

"It's it! the whole thing--and now, you see, I'm turning to find the
path."

I admitted that it was curious, and said that it would be interesting to
see how it all turned out.

For a long time Auber followed in silence, which I tried to relieve by
bantering comments. I was some distance ahead, when I heard him say,
"The grass is brushing through my hands."

"Why not?" I laughed, but it rang false, for I recollected the detail.
It was childishly simple; perhaps that was why the thing bothered me. I
noticed that in the growing darkness the f