In the mornings, he walked with Conrad Lagrange or, sometimes, worked with Sibyl in the garden.  Often, in the evening, the two men would visit the little house next door.  Occasionally, the girl and the woman with the disfigured face would come to sit for a while on the front porch with their friends.  Thus the neighborly friendship that began in the hills was continued in the orange groves.  The comradeship between the two young people grew stronger, hour by hour, as the painter worked at his easel to express with canvas and color and brush the spirit of the girl whose character and life was so unmarred by the world.

A11 through those days, when he was so absorbed in his work that he often failed to reply when she spoke to him, the girl manifested a helpful understanding of his mood that caused the painter to marvel.  She seemed to know, instinctively, when he was baffled or perplexed by the annoying devils of “can’t-get-at-it,” that so delight to torment artist folk; just as she knew and rejoiced when the imps were routed and the soul of the man exulted with the sureness and freedom of his hand.  He asked her, once, when they had finished for the day, how it was that she knew so well how the work was progressing, when she could not see the picture.

She laughed merrily.  “But I can see you; and I”—­she hesitated with that trick, that he was learning to know so well, of searching for a word—­“I just feel what you are feeling.  I suppose it’s because my music is that way.  Sometimes, it simply won’t come right, at all, and I feel as though I never could do it.  Then, again, it seems to do itself; and I listen and wonder—­just as if I had nothing to do with it.”

So that day came when the artist, drawing slowly back from his easel, stood so long gazing at his picture without touching it that the girl called to him, “What’s the matter?  Won’t it come right?”

Slowly he laid aside his palette and brushes.  Standing at the open window, he looked at her—­smiling but silent—­as she held the pose.

For an instant, she did not understand.  “Am I not right?” she asked anxiously.  Then, before he could answer—­“Oh, have you finished?  Is it all done?”

Still smiling, he answered almost sadly, “I have done all that I can do.  Come.”

A moment later, she stood in the studio door.

Seeing her hesitate, he said again, “Come.”

“I—­I am afraid to look,” she faltered.

He laughed.  “Really I don’t think it’s quite so bad as that.”

“Oh, but I don’t mean that I’m afraid it’s bad—­it isn’t.”

The painter watched her,—­a queer expression on his face,—­as he returned curiously, “And how, pray tell, do you know it isn’t bad—­when you have never seen it?  It’s quite the thing, I’ll admit, for critics to praise or condemn without much knowledge of the work; but I didn’t expect you to be so modern.”

“You are making fun of me,” she laughed.  “But I don’t care.  I know your work is good, because I know how and why you did it.  You painted it just as you painted the spring glade, didn’t you?”