say what you
feel. That's what makes it so right, isn't it? They said in Fairlands that
you were a great artist, and I understand why, now. It must be wonderful
to put what you see and feel into a picture like that--where nothing can
ever change or spoil it."

Aaron King laughed with boyish embarrassment. "Oh, but I'm not a great
artist, you know. I am scarcely known at all."

She looked at him with her great, blue eyes sincerely troubled. "And must
one be _known_--to be great?" she asked. "Might not an artist be great and
still be _unknown_? Or, might not one who was really very, very"--again
she seemed to search for a word and as she found it, smiled--"very
_small_, be known all over the world? The newspapers make some really bad
people famous, sometimes, don't they? No, no, you are joking. You do not
really think that being known to the world and greatness are the same."

The man, studying her closely, saw that she was speaking her thoughts as
openly as a child. Experimentally, he said, "If putting what you feel into
your work is greatness, then _you_ are a great artist, for your music does
make one feel as though it came from the mountains, themselves."

She was frankly pleased, and cried intimately, "Oh! do you like my music?
I so wanted you to."

It did not occur to her to ask when he had heard her music. It did not
occur to him to explain. They, neither of them, thought to remember that
they had not been introduced. They really should have pretended that they
did not know each other.

"Sometimes," she continued with winsome confidence, "I think, myself, that
I am really a great violinist--and then, again,"--she added wistfully,--"I
know that I am not. But I am sure that I wouldn't like to be famous, at
all."

He laughed. "Fame doesn't seem to matter so much, does it; when one is up
here in the hills and the canyon gates are closed."

She echoed his laughter with quick delight. "Did you see that? Did you see
those great doors open to let you in, and then close again behind you as
if to shut the world outside? But of course you would. Any one who could
do that"--she pointed to the canvas--"would not fail to see the canyon
gates." With her eyes again upon the picture, she seemed once more to
forget the presence of the painter.

Watching her face,--that betrayed her every passing thought and emotion as
an untroubled pool mirrors the flowers that grow on its banks or the
song-bird that pauses to drink,--the