ly Arnold has the right to be
subtle. I have always regarded you as a straightforward and honest
person. Don't disappoint me."

"St. Andrew forbid it!" Allan declared. "My meaning is painfully simple.
I build up my picture first in my mind. Its transmission to canvas is
purely mechanical. Here goes!"

He took up his palette, and in a few moments was hard at work. Isobel
pointed downwards to my writing-pad.

"Can you too match Allan's excuse?" she asked. "Is your story already
written?"

I shook my head.

"I have been watching you," I answered. "Besides, for a perfectly lazy
person, are you not rather a hard task-mistress? Consider that this is
our first day of summer--the first time we have seen the sun make
diamonds on the sea, the first west wind which has come to us with the
scent of cowslips and wild roses. I claim the right to be lazy if I want
to be."

She smiled.

"The poet," she murmured, "finds these things inspiring."

"The poet," I answered, "is an ordinary creature. Nowadays he eats
mutton-chops, plays golf, and has a banking account. The real man of
feeling, Isobel, is the man who knows how to be idle. Believe me, there
is a certain vulgarity in seeking to make a stock-in-trade of these
delicious moments."

"That is not fair," she protested. "How should we all live if none of
you did any work?"

"For your age, Isobel," I declared seriously, "you are very nearly a
practical person. You make me more than ever anxious for an answer to my
last question. What were you thinking of just now?"

Her eyes seemed to drift away from mine. A touch of her new seriousness
returned. She pointed to that thin blue line.

"Beyond there," she said, "is to-morrow, and all the to-morrows to come.
One sees a very little way."

"Our limitations," I answered, "are life's lesson to us. If to-morrow is
hidden, so much the more reason that we should live to-day."

"Without thought for the morrow?"

"Without care for it," I answered. "Are we not Bohemians, and is it not
our text?"

She shook her head.

"It is not yours," she answered slowly. "I am sure of that."

I looked at her quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say," she answered gravely. "Men and women to whom the
present is sufficient surely cannot achieve very much in life. All the
time they must concentrate powers which need expansion. I think that it
must be those who try to climb the walls, those even who tear their
fingers and their hearts