When Mrs. Taine was gone, Sibyl Andres sat for a little while before her portrait; wondering, dumbly, at the happiness of that face upon the canvas.  There were no tears.  She could not cry.  Her eyes burned hot and dry.  Her lips were parched.  Rising, she drew the curtain carefully to hide the picture, and started toward the door.  She paused.  Going to the easel that held the other picture, she laid her hand upon the curtain.  Again, she paused.  Aaron King had said that she must not look at that picture—­Conrad Lagrange had said that she must not—­why?  She did not know why.

Perhaps—­if the mountain girl had drawn aside the curtain and had looked upon the face of Mrs. Taine as Aaron King had painted it—­perhaps the rest of my story would not have happened.

But, true to the wish of her friends, even in her misery, Sibyl Andres held her hand.  At the door of the studio, she turned again, to look long and lingeringly about the room.  Then she went out, closing and locking the door, and leaving the key on a hidden nail, as her custom was.

Going slowly, lingeringly, through the rose garden to the little gate in the hedge, she disappeared in the orange grove.

Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange, returning from a long walk, overtook Myra Willard, who was returning from town, just as the woman of the disfigured face arrived at the gate of the little house in the orange grove.  For a moment, the three stood chatting—­as neighbors will,—­then the two men went on to their own home.  Czar, racing ahead, announced their coming to Yee Kee and the Chinaman met them as they entered the living-room.  Telling them of Mrs. Taine’s visit, he gave Aaron King the letter that she had left for him.

As the artist, conscious of the scrutinizing gaze of his friend, read the closely written pages, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment and shame.  When he had finished, he faced the novelist’s eyes steadily and, without speaking, deliberately and methodically tore Mrs. Taine’s letter into tiny fragments.  Dropping the scraps of paper into the waste basket, he dusted his hands together with a significant gesture and looked at his watch.  “Her train left at four o’clock.  It is now four-thirty.”

“For which,” returned Conrad Lagrange, solemnly, “let us give thanks.”

As the novelist spoke, Czar, on the porch outside, gave a low “woof” that signalized the approach of a friend.

Looking through the open door, they saw Myra Willard coming hurriedly up the walk.  They could see that the woman was greatly agitated, and went quicklv forward to meet her.

Women of Myra Willard’s strength of character—­particularly those who have passed through the furnace of some terrible experience as she so evidently had—­are not given to loud, uncontrolled expression of emotion.  That she was alarmed and troubled was evident.  Her face was white, her eyes were frightened and she trembled so that Aaron King helped her to a seat; but she told them clearly, with no unnecessary, hysterical exclamations, what had happened.  Upon entering the house, after parting from the two men at the gate, a few minutes before, she had found a letter from Sibyl.  The girl was gone.