"Brian Oakley told us that you and Mr.
Lagrange were camped down here.

Mr.Lagrange said that you are a good man; Brian Oakley says that you are too--are you ?" The artist flushed.

In his embarrassment, he did not note the significance of her reference to the novelist.

"At least," he said gently, "I am not a very _bad_ man." A smile broke over her face--her mood changing as quickly as the sunlight breaks through a cloud.

"I know you are not"-- she said--"a _bad_ man wouldn't have wanted to paint this place as you have painted it." She turned to go.
"But wait!" he cried, "you haven't told me--will you teach me to know your mountains as you know them ?" "I'm sure I cannot say," she answered smiling, as she moved away.
"But at least, we will meet again," he urged.
She laughed gaily, "Why not?
The mountains are for you as well as for me; and though the hills _are_ so big, the trails are narrow, and the passes very few." With another laugh, she slipped away--her brown dress, that, in the shifty lights under the thick foliage, so harmonized with the colors of bush and vine and tree and rock, being so quickly lost to the artist's eye that she seemed almost to vanish into the scene before him.
But presently, from beyond the willow wall, he heard her voice again--singing to the accompaniment of the mountain stream.