quite still, and its rider was standing beside
it, one arm embracing its neck, and with head leaning back against the
creature's glossy shoulder. The person thus standing was Madame Le
Maitre, and she was looking up steadfastly at the cliffs, of which this
point in the road displayed a new expanse.

So silently had the horse of Caius moved in the muffling snow that,
coming up on the other side, he was able to look at the lady for one
full moment before she saw him, and in that moment and the next he saw
that the sight of him robbed her face of the peace which had been
written there. She was wrapped as usual in her fur-lined cloak and
hood. She looked to him inquiringly, with perhaps just a touch of
indignant displeasure in her expression, waiting for him to explain, as
if he had come on purpose to interrupt her.

"I am sorry. I had no idea you were here, or I would not have come."

The next moment he marvelled at himself as to how he had known that this
was the right thing to say; for it did not sound polite.

Her displeasure was appeased.

"You have found my pictures, then," she said simply.

"Only this hour, and by chance."

By this time he was wondering by what road she had got there. If she had
ridden alone across the bay from Harbour Island, where the Pembrokes
lived, she had done a bold thing for a woman, and one, moreover, which,
in the state of health in which he had seen her last, would have been
impossible to her.

Madame Le Maitre had begun to move slowly, as one who wakes from a happy
dream. He perceived that she was making preparations to mount.

"I cannot understand it," he cried; "how can these pictures come just by
chance? I have heard of the Picture Rocks on Lake Superior, for
instance, but I never conceived of anything so distinct, so lovely, as
these that I have seen."

"The angels make them," said Madame Le Maitre. She paused again (though
her bridle had been gathered in her hand ready for the mount), and
looked up again at the rock.

Caius was not unheedful of the force of that soft but absolute
assertion, but he must needs speak, if he spoke at all, from his own
point of view, not hers.

"I suppose," he said, "that the truth is there is something upon the
rock that strikes us as a resemblance, and our imagination furnishes the
detail that perfects the picture."

"In that case would you not see one thing and I another?"

Now for the first time his eyes followed hers, and on the gra