ght," she said abruptly, "I'll stay. But you must be quick. Th'
time is goin' fast."

Kenset went swiftly across the cabin to that part which served as
kitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shiny
nickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharon
on the table.

He struck a match and presently a clean blue flame grew up beneath
it.

He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, with
water from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the big
trunks against the farther wall and brought out a little tin of cakes,
such as one could buy in any city of the world.

All this was absorbing to the girl in the big chair, who watched with
grave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all the
time. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of the
strain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mind
the knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potential
murderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From a
pan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as a
woman, and presently he spread between them on the table a small
repast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness.

He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her no
consciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the big
room of the Holding for all the flutter there was in her.

He told her somewhat of himself, of his life in the East, but he was
careful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of the
circumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passed
as if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharon
rose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his home
of any Lost Valley denizen.

"Bring out your picture," she said decisively, "I'll help you hang it,
an' then I must go home."

So Kenset dived once more into the mysterious recesses of the trunk
and this time brought out a thing of rare beauty and value, a large
tapestry, some four by six feet in size, a wonderful thing of soft and
deathless hues, of cunning distances, of Greek figures and leaning
trees, of sea-line so faint as to be almost lost in the misty skies.

"Oh!" said Tharon Last with an intake of her breath, "Oh, where do
they make such things?"

"Far on the other side of the world," said Kenset gently, pleased
with the wonder in her wide eyes, the evident and quick