"Yes, if I can. But your eyes are blue, and blue eyes are hard to paint
well. Yours are so very blue, Joan. Didn't Joe ever tell you that?"

"No--that's all fulishness."

"Nothing that's true is foolish. Now I'm going to make some little sketches
of you, so as to get each fold and shadow in your dress right."

Barron drew rapidly, and Joan--ever ready to talk to a willing listener
when her confidence was won--prattled on, turning the conversation as usual
to the matters she loved. Upon her favorite subjects she dared not open her
mouth at home, and even her lover refused to listen to the legends of the
land, but they were part of the girl's life notwithstanding, drawn into her
blood from her mother, a thousand times more real and precious than even
the promised heaven of Luke Gospeldom, not to be wholly smothered at any
time. Occasionally, indeed, uneasy fears that discussion of such concerns
was absolutely sinful kept her dumb for a week, then the religious wave
swept on, and Cornish folk-lore, with its splendor and romance, again
filled her heart and bubbled from her lips. Her little stories pleased
Barron mightily. Excitement heightened Joan's beauty. Her absolute
innocence at the age of seventeen struck him as remarkable. It seemed
curious that a child born in a cottage, where realities and facts are apt
to roughly front boy and girl alike, should know so little. She was a
beautiful, primitive creature, with strange store of fairy fable in her
mind; a treasury which brought color and joy into life. So she prattled,
and the man painted.

Pure artistic interest filled Barron's brain at this season; not a shadow
of passion made his pencil shaky or his eye dim; he began to learn the girl