lization'. Can't you guess why?"

She shook her head. "Tell me."

"Because,--in spite of all that the world that reads my books can
give,--poor old 'Civilization' cannot be happy without the message that
'Nature' brings from her mountains."

"And you, too, love the mountains and--and this garden, and my music?" she
asked half doubtingly. "You are not pretending that too--just to amuse
me?"

"No, I am not pretending that," he said.

"Then why--how can you do the--the other thing? I can't understand."

"Of course, you can't understand--how could you? You are 'Nature' and
'Nature' must often be puzzled by the things that 'Civilization' does."

"Yes. I think that is true," she agreed. "But I'm glad you like my music,
anyway."

"And so am I glad--that I _can_ like it. That's the only thing that saves
me."

"And your friend, the artist,--does he like my mountain music, do you
think?"

"Very much. He needs it too."

"I am glad," she answered simply. "I hoped he would like it, and that it
would help him. It was really for him that I have played."

"You played for him?"

"Yes," she returned without confusion. "You see, I did not know about
you--then. I thought you were altogether the man who wrote those
books--and so I _could_ not play for you. That is--I mean--you
understand--I could not play--" again she seemed to search for a word, and
finding it, smiled--"I could not play _myself_ for you. But I thought that
because he was an _artist_ he would understand; and that if I _could_ make
the music tell him of the mountains it would, perhaps, help him a little
to make his work beautiful and right--do you see?"

"Yes," he answered smilingly, "I see. I might have known that it was for
_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 i