“But the light is not right,” he protested.

“Never mind, you must pretend that it is,” she retorted.  “Can’t you pretend?”

To humor her, he obeyed, laughing.

“You may look, now,” she said, a minute later.

He turned to see her standing close beside him, holding out a charming little basket that she had woven of the green willows and decorated with moss and watercress.  In the basket, on the cool, damp moss, and lightly covered with the cress, lay a half dozen fine rainbow trout.

“How pretty!” he exclaimed.  “So that is what you have been doing!”

“They are for you,” she said simply.

“For me?” he cried.

She nodded brightly; “For you and Mr. Lagrange.  I know you like them because you said you were fishing when you heard my violin.  And I thought that you wouldn’t want to leave your picture, to fish for yourself, so I took them for you.”

The artist concealed his embarrassment with difficulty; and, while expressing his thanks and appreciation in rather formal words, studied her face keenly.  But she had tendered her gift with a spontaneous naturalness, an unaffected kindliness, and an innocent disregard of conventionalities, that would have disarmed a man with much less native gentleness than Aaron King.

Leaving the basket of trout in his hand, she turned, and swung the empty creel over her shoulder.  Then, putting on her hat, she picked up her rod.

“Oh—­are you going?” he said.

“You have finished your work for to-day,” she answered

“But let me go with you, a little way.”

She shook her head.  “No, I don’t want you.”

“But you will come again?”

“Perhaps—­if you won’t stop work—­but I can’t promise—­you see I never know what I am going to do up here in the mountains,” she answered whimsically.  “I might go to the top of old ‘Berdo’ in the morning; or I might be here, waiting for you, when you come to paint.”

He was putting his things in the box—­thinking he would persuade her to let him accompany her a little way; if she saw that he really would paint no more.  When he bent over the box, she was speaking.  “I hope you will,” he answered.

There was no reply.

He straightened up and looked around.

She was gone.

For some time, he stood searching the glade with his eyes, carefully; listening to catch a sound—­a puzzled, baffled look upon his face.  Taking his things, at last, he started up the little path.  But before he reached the old gate, a low laugh caused him to whirl quickly about.

There she stood, beside the spring—­a teasing smile on her face.  Before he could command himself, she danced a step or two, with an elfish air, and slipped away through the green willow wall.  Another merry laugh came back to him and then—­the silence of the little glade, and the sound of the distant waters.