_him_ that you brought your message from the hills. But poor old
'Civilization' is frightfully stupid sometimes, you know."

Laughingly, she turned to the lattice wall of the arbor, and parting the
screen of vines a little, said to him, "Look here!"

Standing beside her, Conrad Lagrange, through the window in the end of the
studio next the garden, saw Aaron King at his easel; the artist's position
in the light of the big, north window being in a direct line between the
two openings and the arbor. Mrs. Taine was sitting too far out of line to
be seen.

The girl laughed gleefully. "Do you see him at his work? At first, I only
hid here to find what kind of people were going to live in my old home.
But when he was making our old barn into a studio, and I heard who you
both were, I came because I love to watch him; as I try to make the music
I think he would love to hear."

The novelist studied her intently. She was so artless--so unaffected by
the conventions of the world--in a word, so natural in expressing her
thoughts, that the man who had given the best years of his life to feed
the vicious, grossly sensual and bestial imaginations of his readers was
deeply moved. He was puzzled what to say. At last, he murmured haltingly,
"You like the artist, then?"

Her eyes were full of curious laughter as she answered, "Why, what a funny
question--when I have never even talked with him. How _could_ I like any
one I have never known?"

"But you make your music for him; and you come here to watch him?"