As they sat in the lee of the great rock, with the wind that sweeps the mountain tops singing in the pines above their heads, they looked directly down upon the wide Galena Valley and far across to the spurs and slopes of the San Jacintos beyond.  Sibyl’s keen eyes—­mountain-trained from childhood—­marked a railway train crawling down the grade from San Gorgonio Pass toward the distant ocean.  She tried in vain to point it out to her companion.  But the city eyes of the man could not find the tiny speck in the vast landscape that lay within the range of their vision.  The artist looked at his watch.  The train was the Golden State Limited that had brought him from the far away East, a few months before.

Aaron King remembered how, from the platform of the observation car, he had looked up at the mountains from which he now looked down.  He remembered too, the woman into whose eyes he had, for the first time, looked that day.  Turning his face to the west, he could distinguish under the haze of the distance the dark squares of the orange groves of Fairlands.  Before three days had passed he would be in his studio home again.  And the woman of the observation car platform—­From distant Fairlands, the man turned his eyes to the winsome face of his girl comrade on the mountain top.

“Please”—­she said, meeting his serious gaze with a smile of frank fellowship—­“please, what have I done?”

Smiling, he answered gravely, “I don’t exactly know—­but you have done something.”

“You look so serious.  I’m sure it must be pretty bad.  Can’t you think what it is?”

He laughed.  “I was thinking about down there”—­he pointed into the haze of the distant valley to the west.

“Don’t,” she returned, “let’s think about up here”—­she waved her hand toward the high crest of the San Bernardinos, and the mountain peaks about them.

“Will you let me paint your portrait—­when we get back to the orange groves?” he asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she returned.  “Why do you want to paint me?  I’m nobody, you know—­but just me.”

“That’s the reason I want to paint you,” he answered.

“What’s the reason?”

“Because you are you.”

“But a portrait of me would not help you on your road to fame,” she retorted.

He flinched.  “Perhaps,” he said, “that’s partly why I want to do it.”

“Because it won’t help you?”

“Because it won’t help me on the road to fame.  You will pose for me, won’t you?”

“I’m sure I cannot say”—­she answered—­“perhaps—­please don’t let’s talk about it.”

“Why not?” he asked curiously.

“Because”—­she answered seriously—­“we have been such good friends up here in the mountains; such—­such comrades.  Up here in the hills, with the canyon gates shut against the world that I don’t know, you are like—­like Brian Oakley—­and like my father used to be—­and down there”—­she hesitated.