The girl knew what he was doing--that is, she knew that he was painting a portrait of Mrs.Taine--and so, with Myra Willard, avoided the place.

But Conrad Lagrange now, made the neighboring house in the orange grove his place of refuge from Louise Taine, who always accompanied Mrs.Taine,--lest the world should talk,--but who never went as far as the studio.
But often, as he worked, the artist heard the music of the mountain girl's violin; and he knew that she, in her own beautiful way, was trying to help him--as she would have said--to put the mountains into his work.

Many times, he was conscious of the feeling that some one was watching him.
Once, pausing at the garden end of the studio as he paced to and fro, he caught a glimpse of her as she slipped through the gate in the Ragged Robin hedge.

And once, in the morning, after one of those afternoons when he had gone away with Mrs.Taine at the conclusion of the sitting, he found a note pinned to the velvet curtain that hid the canvas on his working easel.

It was a quaint little missive; written in one of the girl's fanciful moods, with a reference to "Blue Beard," and the assurance that she had been strong and had not looked at the forbidden picture.
As the work progressed, Mrs.Taine remarked, often, how the artist was changed.