good."

He took the thing off the easel.

"If I've learned as much about color as I think this is bad--well
there's only a little left for me to learn."

"Now you will paint others that will seem faultless at the time and bad
a year later. That's the penalty of growth, but it's the proof. Make
your prayer to the god of painting: 'May everything I do seem bad when
it's a year old!'"

"I'll try to," he returned gravely. Then, "Let's put this out of sight
quick, before Virginia sees it."

"You didn't burn it," she asked, when he returned.

"I should think not. I'd have to fight Ben if I burned that. Of course I
didn't know any better when I gave it to him, any more than I knew about
his songs. That's another thing you must have laughed at me for."

He laughed himself as she looked up at him with puzzled inquiry, and
went on to confess how he had sung Ben's choicest ballad at the
Monastery.

"Of course it's a funny song," he continued, as he returned to the
drawing board, "but it isn't so very much funnier than a lot that aren't
supposed to be funny at all. Come, now," he rallied her, "don't they all
rub in the sadness, even the ones you might think serious? There must be
a million songs about 'Dreaming,' 'I Dreamed that You Were with Me,
Love!' and 'It was All a Dream!' and 'Could I but Recall that Day!' and
'Alas, It was not so to be!' and 'Must We, then, Part Forever!' Always
crying about something! Always moaning 'if only' something or other.
They're about as teary a lot as Ben's songs. I told Virginia last night
I never wanted to hear another 'Could I but--' song; they're as bad as
'The Fatal Wedding.'"

Though he had rushed at the drawings with a powerful incentive--to make
himself free so that he could perform one great service for his lady--he
yielded often to the persuasions of Mrs. Laithe and took Virginia out
for adventures. They explored box canyons that she believed to be
impenetrable until he nonchalantly opened a way to their secret
recesses. They whipped trout streams and he complacently caught fish
from holes she would angle in without result. He tried to persuade her
that certain brown patches he professed to detect off through the forest
from time to time were deer; but vainly each time, until there would be
a sudden terrific shattering amid the underbrush, and perhaps a fleeting
glimpse of the brown patch with its white center, flying in swift rebuke
to her unbelief. They climbed hills togeth