into its depths with all the eagerness of an insatiable vanity.

"I can't see nothing" he heard her say impatiently. "I can't see nothin'
nohow."

Despite the beauty, his first glance could not help showing him she was
a figure so incongruous and inconsistent as to be almost _bizarre_. When
she stood upright revealing fully her tall figure in its shabby finery,
he felt something like resentment. He made a restive movement which she
heard. The bit of broken looking-glass she held in her hand fell into
the water, she uttered a shamefaced angry cry.

"What d'ye want?" she exclaimed. "What are ye a-doin'? I didn't know as
no one was a-lookin'. I"--

Her head was flung backward, her full throat looked like a pillar of
marble against the black edge of her dress, her air was fierce. He would
not have been an artist if he had not been powerfully struck with a
sense of her picturesqueness.

But he did not smile at all as he answered:--

"I board at the house there. I returned home late and was thirsty. I
came here for water to drink."

Her temper died down as suddenly as it had flamed, and she seemed given
up to a miserable, shamed trepidation.

"Oh," she said, "don't ye tell 'em--don't--I--I'm Dusk Dunbar."

Then, as was very natural, he became curious and possibly did smile--a
very little.

"What in the name of all that is fantastic are you doing?"

She made an effort at being defiant and succeeded pretty well.

"I wasn't doin' no harm," she said. "I was--dressin' up a bit. It aint
nobody's business."

"That's true," he answered coolly. "At all events it is not mine--though
it is rather late for a lady to be alone at such a place. However, if
you have no objection, I will get what I came for and go back."

She said nothing when he stepped down and filled the gourd, but she
regarded him with a sort of irritable watchfulness as he drank.

"Are ye--are ye a-goin' to tell?" she faltered, when he had finished.

"No," he answered as coolly as before. "Why should I?"

Then he gave her a long look from head to foot The dress was a poor
enough velveteen and had a cast-off air, but it clung to her figure
finely, and its sleeves were picturesque with puffs at the shoulder and
slashings of white,--indeed the moonlight made her all black and white;
her eyes, which were tawny brown by day, were black as velvet now under
the straight lines of her brows, and her face was pure dead fairness
itself.

When, his look ended,