Laughing, she answered, “My father and Brian Oakley taught me.  If you will watch the wild things in the woods, you can learn to do it too.  I am no more a spirit than the cougar, when it stalks a rabbit in the chaparral; or a mink, as it slips among the rocks along the creek; or a fawn, when it crouches to hide in the underbrush.”

“You have been fishing?” he asked.

She laughed mockingly, “You are so observing!  I think you might have taken that for granted, and asked what luck.”

“I believe I might almost take that for granted too,” he returned.

“I took a few,” she said carelessly.  Then, with a charming air of authority—­“And now, you must go back to your work.  I shall vanish instantly, if you waste another moment’s time because I am here.”

“But I want to talk,” he protested.  “I have been working hard since noon.”

“Of course you have,” she retorted.  “But presently the light will change again, and you won’t be able to do any more to-day; so you must keep busy while you can.”

“And you won’t vanish—­if I go on with my work?” he asked doubtfully.  She was smiling at him with such a mischievous air, that he feared, if he turned away, she would disappear.

She laughed aloud; “Not if you work,” she said.  “But if you stop—­I’m gone.”

As she spoke, she went toward his easel, and, resting her fly rod carefully against the trunk of a near-by alder, slipped the creel from her shoulder, placing the basket on the ground with her hat.  Then, while the painter watched her, she stood silently looking at the picture.  Presently, she faced him, and, with an impulsive stamp of her foot, said, “Why don’t you work?  How can you waste your time and this light, looking at me?  I shall go, if you don’t come back to your picture, this minute.”

With a laugh, he obeyed.

For a moment, she watched him; then turned away; and he heard her moving about, down by the tiny stream, where it disappeared under the willows.

Once, he paused and turned to look in her direction “What are you up to, now?” he said.

“I shall be up to leaving you,”—­she retorted,—­“if you look around, again.”

He promptly turned once more to his picture.

Soon, she came back, and seated herself beside her creel and rod, where she could see the picture under the artist’s brush.  “Does it bother, if I watch?” she asked softly.

“No, indeed,” he answered.  “It helps—­that is, it helps when it is you who watch.”  Which—­to the painter’s secret amazement—­was a literal truth.  The gray rock with the splash of sunshine that would not come right, ceased to trouble him, now.  Stimulated by her presence, he worked with a freedom and a sureness that was a delight.

When he could not refrain from looking in her direction, he saw that she was bending, with busy hands, over some willow twigs in her lap.  “What in the world are you doing?” he asked curiously.