rrace, to the lake.

The water was so still as to suggest a solid rather than a liquid; to
the west shadowy mountains of cloud charged with thunder swelled toward
the zenith. The long midsummer drought was coming to an end, and all
birds and insects were silent, as if tired of complaining. Across the
lake one maple, turned prematurely scarlet, brought out the soft greens
of the woods with an astounding accent. Directly in front of this
flaming tree, a snow-white heron stood motionless upon a gray rock.

[Illustration: They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the
first and most formal of their many gardens]

To Barbara it seemed on that day that "Clovelly" was the loveliest place
in all the world, and her father, who had fashioned it out of rough farm
lands, one of the world's most charming artists. "Why paint with
oils, when you can draw with trees and flowers and grass and water?" she
asked herself.

"In the time it took me to do Blizzard's bust," she said, "I could have
planted millions of flowers and seen them bloom."

"At least," said her father, "you can finish a bust, but a garden that
is finished isn't a garden. What are you going to do with it?"

"The bust? Why, sometimes I think I'll just leave it in the studio, and
let it survive or perish. Sometimes I want to take a hammer and smash it
to pieces."

"It didn't come out as well as you hoped?"

"Of course not. Does anything ever? But it's the best that I can do. And
I shall never do anything better."

"Nonsense."

"I shall never even try. I want to recover all the things I've thrown
away, and put them back in my head and heart where they belong, and
just live."

"Well," said her father, smiling, "if you feel that way, why that's a
good way to feel. But I'm afraid art is stronger in you than you think.
Just now you're tired and disillusionized. In a month you'll be making
sketches for some monumental opus."

"If I do," said Barbara, "it will be executed here at Clovelly. I never
want to leave Clovelly. I feel safe here, safe from myself and other
people. I think," and she smiled whimsically, "that I should almost
like to settle down and make you a good daughter."

"A good daughter," said the surgeon, "marries; and her father builds a
beautiful house for her, just over the hill from his own--remember the
little valley where we found all the fringed gentian one year?--and the
shortest cut between the two houses is worn bare and packed h