ght and shadow and
small things and seek out inner action."

He worked in silence, then again began to speak of painters, Italian and
Spanish. He asked me if I had seen such and such pictures in Seville.

"Yes. They are good."

"Do you know Monsalvat?"

I said that I had climbed there one day. "I dream a painting!" he said,
"The Quest of the Grail. Now I see it running over the four walls of a
church, and now I see it all packed into one man who rides. Then again
it has seemed to me truer to have it in a man and woman who walk, or
perhaps even are seated. What do you think?"

I was thinking of Isabel who died in my arms twenty years ago. "I would
have it man and woman," I said. "Unless, like Messer Leonardo, you can
put both in one."

He sat still, his mind working, while in a fair inner land Isabel and I
moved together; then in a meditative quiet he finished his drawing. He
himself was admirable, fine gold and bronze, sapphire-eyed, with a face
where streams of visions moved the muscles, and all against the blue and
the willow tree.

At last he put away pencil, and at his gesture I came from the boat and
the reeds. I looked at what he had drawn, and then he shut book and, the
mule following us, we moved back to the road.

"My dear fisherman," he said, "you are trudging afoot and your dress
exhibits poverty. Painters may paint Jove descending in showers of
golden pesos and yet have few pesos in purse. I have at present ten. I
should like to share them with you who have done me various good turns
to-day."

I said that he was generous but that he had done me good turns. Moreover
I was not utterly without coin, and certainly the hour had paid for
itself. So he mounted his mule and wished me good fortune, and I wished
him good fortune.

"Are you going to Santa Fe?"

"Yes. I have a friend in the camp."

"I go there to paint her Highness the Queen for his Highness the King.
Perhaps we shall meet again. I am Manuel Rodriguez."

"I guessed that," I answered, "an hour ago! Be so good, great painter,
as not to remember me. It will serve me better."

The light played again over his face. "_The Disguised Hidalgo_.
Excellent pictures come to me like that, in a great warm light, and
excellent names for pictures.--Very good. In a way, so to speak, I shall
completely forget you!"

Two on horseback, a churchman and a knight, with servants following,
came around a bend of the dusty road and recognizing Manuel Rodrigue