pickle of
innocence, but her heart still retained something very youthful and
inflammable. She loved both nature and animals with a fervor, a love like
old wine fermented through age, with a sensuous love that she had never
bestowed on men.

"One thing is certain, that the sight of a bitch nursing her puppies, a
mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of
young ones, screaming, with their open mouths and their enormous heads,
affected her perceptibly.

"Poor, solitary, sad, wandering beings! I love you ever since I became
acquainted with Miss Harriet.

"I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me, but
dare not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in the
morning with my knapsack on my back, she would accompany me in silence as
far as the end of the village, evidently struggling to find words with
which to begin a conversation. Then she would leave me abruptly and walk
away quickly with her springy step.

"One day, however, she plucked up courage:

"I would like to see how you paint pictures. Are you willing? I have been
very curious.'

"And she blushed as if she had said something very audacious.

"I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had begun a
large picture.

"She remained standing behind me, following all my gestures with
concentrated attention. Then, suddenly, fearing perhaps that she was
disturbing me, she said: 'Thank you,' and walked away.

"But she soon became more friendly, and accompanied me every day, her
countenance exhibiting visible pleasure. She carried her camp stool under
her arm, not permitting me to carry it. She would remain there for hours,
silent and motionless, following with her eyes the point of my brush, in
its every movement. When I obtained unexpectedly just the effect I wanted
by a dash of color put on with the palette knife, she involuntarily
uttered a little 'Ah!' of astonishment, of joy, of admiration. She had
the most tender respect for my canvases, an almost religious respect for
that human reproduction of a part of nature's work divine. My studies
appeared to her a kind of religious pictures, and sometimes she spoke to
me of God, with the idea of converting me.

"Oh, he was a queer, good-natured being, this God of hers! He was a sort
of village philosopher without any great resources and without great
power, for she always figured him to herself as inconsolable over
injustices committed