ised at her open audacity, half
repentant. They came so meekly at her call. "And my husband is sensitive
to fever from the East. No, _please do not throw away your cigars. We
can sit by the open window and enjoy the evening while you smoke_."

She was very talkative for a moment; subconscious excitement was the
cause.

"It is so still--so wonderfully still," she went on, as no one spoke;
"so peaceful, and the air so very sweet ... and God is always near to
those who need His aid." The words slipped out before she realized quite
what she was saying, yet fortunately, in time to lower her voice, for no
one heard them. They were, perhaps, an instinctive expression of relief.
It flustered her that she could have said the thing at all.

Sanderson brought her shawl and helped to arrange the chairs; she
thanked him in her old-fashioned, gentle way, declining the lamps which
he had offered to light. "They attract the moths and insects so, I
think!"

The three of them sat there in the gloaming. Mr. Bittacy's white
moustache and his wife's yellow shawl gleaming at either end of the
little horseshoe, Sanderson with his wild black hair and shining eyes
midway between them. The painter went on talking softly, continuing
evidently the conversation begun with his host beneath the cedar. Mrs.
Bittacy, on her guard, listened--uneasily.

"For trees, you see, rather conceal themselves in daylight. They reveal
themselves fully only after sunset. I never _know_ a tree," he bowed
here slightly towards the lady as though to apologize for something he
felt she would not quite understand or like, "until I've seen it in the
night. Your cedar, for instance," looking towards her husband again so
that Mrs. Bittacy caught the gleaming of his turned eyes, "I failed with
badly at first, because I did it in the morning. You shall see to-morrow
what I mean--that first sketch is upstairs in my portfolio; it's quite
another tree to the one you bought. That view"--he leaned forward,
lowering his voice--"I caught one morning about two o'clock in very
faint moonlight and the stars. I saw the naked being of the thing--"

"You mean that you went out, Mr. Sanderson, at that hour?" the old lady
asked with astonishment and mild rebuke. She did not care particularly
for his choice of adjectives either.

"I fear it was rather a liberty to take in another's house, perhaps," he
answered courteously. "But, having chanced to wake, I saw the tree from
my window,