ces. As before,
we fell into the matter suddenly, with no warning, and at a light
question from me the like of which I must have asked her many times with
no such answer as I then got.

All about us lay the windfalls, piled evenly, rich heaps of sunset
colour. The better fruit gleamed through the boughs like fairy lamps and
great ladders leaned against these on which the men climbed, picking
carefully. Below them the maidservants, laughing and excited at this
pleasant change of labour, handed the baskets and filled the gaping
barrels. And up the ladders and through the trees and among the tinted
heaps raced and played the children of the house, sniffing the heady
flavour of the rich fruit, teasing the maids, cajoling the men,
staggering under the heavy baskets, pelting each other, even, with the
crimson and yellow globes, bringing each specially large and perfect one
to their mother for congratulation. She, stopping for the moment her
strange, jewelled embroidery, that alone would have marked her for an
artist of high powers, would lean over each boy and girl, murmuring her
praise, soothing in the same breath the unlucky ones who had not found
the most gorgeous fruit, warning the men not to trouble the yet unready
apples, quieting the maids if they grew too boisterous, an eye and an
ear for everyone and everything.

As the lowering sun struck full on the nearest heap of red and gold, and
turned the russet fruit on the bough to bronze nuggets wrapped in
leaves of wonderfully wrought jade, a sudden thought tempted me and I
spoke quickly, glancing slyly at her calm, contented face.

"Look at that colour!" I said, "does it not cry out to you to be
painted? Does it not make you remember that spring orchard of yours that
everyone praised so, and from which the great Master predicted your
future? Would you not like to escape from all this pleasant, tiny
bustle, this network of ceaseless demands upon your hands, your heart,
your brain, and once again attack a real work?"

She looked curiously at me.

"A real work?" she repeated.

"I mean an enduring work," I explained, "a thing from which you can lift
your hand some day and say, 'This is done. To the best of my power it is
finished. Let it stand, and judge me by it.'"

She nodded her head slowly and I saw that she was not really looking at
me, though she seemed to be, but beyond me, across the splendid orchard
piles, into the stacked gold of the corn far afield.

"Tha