As the two men passed outward through the canyon gates and, looking backward as they went, saw those mighty doors close silently behind them, the artist was moved by emotions that were strange and new to the man who, two months before, had watched those gates open to receive him.  This, too, is true; as that man, then, knew, but did not know, the mountains; so this man, now, knew, yet still did not know, himself.

Where the road crosses, for the last time, the tumbling stream from the heart of the hills, they halted; and for one night slept again at the foot of the mountains.  The next day they arrived at their little home in the orange grove.  To Aaron King, it seemed that they had been away for years.

When the traces of their days upon the road had been removed, and they were garbed again in the conventional costume of the world; when their outfit had been put away, and a home found for patient Croesus; the artist went to his studio.  The afternoon passed and Yee Kee called dinner; but Aaron King did not come.  Then Conrad Lagrange went to find him.  Softly, the older man pushed open the studio door to see the painter sitting before the portrait of Mrs. Taine, with the package of his mother’s letters in his hand.

Without a sound, the novelist withdrew, leaving the door ajar.  Going to the corner of the house, he whistled low, and in answer, Czar come bounding to him from the porch.  “Go find Aaron, Czar,” said the man, pointing toward the studio.  “Go find Aaron.”

Obediently, with waving tail, the dog trotted off, and pushing open the door entered the room; followed a few moments later by his master.

Conrad Lagrange smiled as he saw that the easel was without a canvas.  The portrait of Mrs. Taine was turned to the wall.

Chapter XXIV

James Rutlidge Makes a Mistake

When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange had said, “good-by,” to their friends, at Sibyl Andres’ home, that evening; and had returned to spend their last night at the camp in the sycamores; the girl’s mood was again the mood of one oppressed by a haunting, foreboding fear.

Sibyl could not have expressed, or even to herself defined, her fear.  She only knew that in the presence of James Rutlidge she was frightened.  She had tried many times to overcome her strange antipathy; for Rutlidge, until that day in the studio, had never been other than kind and courteous in his persistent efforts to win her friendship.  Perhaps it was the impression left by the memory of Myra Willard’s manner at the time of their first meeting with him, three years before, in Brian Oakley’s home; perhaps it was because the woman with the disfigured face had so often warned her against permitting her slight acquaintance with Rutlidge to develop; perhaps it was something else—­some instinct, possible, only, to one of her pure, unspoiled nature—­whatever it was, the mountain girl who was so naturally unafraid, feared this man who, in his own world, was an acknowledged authority upon matters of the highest spiritual and moral significance.