“My land o’ love!” she exclaimed.  “Why, you look like you been buried and dug up!”

“Permit me,” said he, politely, “to congratulate you upon your perspicacity.  That is exactly what happened to me.”

“Eh!” said Grandma, setting her spectacles straight on her old nose.

“And let me add:  It’s worth the price!” said the resurrected one, genially.  “Grandma Baker, were you very much in love?”

“Abner tried his dumdest to find that out,” said Grandma Baker.  “He was the plaguedest man ever was for wantin’ to know things, but somehow I sort o’ didn’t want him changed any.  You got ways put me mightily in mind o’ Abner.”  The old eyes were very sweet, and a wintry rose crept into her withered cheek.  She added:  “I know what’s ailin’ you, young man!  Lord knows I hope you’ll be happy as Abner and me was!”

He went back to his room and communed with his picture.  It was the sort that, if you stayed with it a little while, liked to commune with you.  It would divine your mood, and the eyes followed you with an uncanny understanding, the smile said more than any words could say.  You almost saw her eyelids move, her breast rise and fall to her breathing.  The man trembled before his masterpiece.

His heart swelled.  He exulted in his genius, a high gift to be laid at the feet of the beloved.  All he had, all he could ever be, belonged to her.  She had called forth his best.  He said to her painted semblance: 

“You are my first love-gift.  I am going to send you to her, and she’ll know she hasn’t given her love, her beauty, her youth, to an unworthy or an obscure lover.  She’s given herself to me, Peter Champneys, and because she loves me I’ll give her a name she can wear like a crown:  I’ll set her upon the purple heights!”

She was at the far end of the Thatcher garden, behind the house and hidden from it, when he arrived with the canvas, which he hadn’t dared entrust to any other carrier—­he was too jealously careful of it.  No, he told Mrs. Thatcher, it wasn’t necessary to disturb her guest.  Just allow him to place the canvas in Mrs. Riley’s sitting-room.  She would find it there when she returned.

Mrs. Thatcher complied willingly enough.  She liked the tall, black-bearded man whom shrewd old Grandma Baker couldn’t praise sufficiently.

“Excuse me for not goin’ up with you, on account of my hands bein’ in the mixin’-bowl.  It’s a picture, ain’t it?  You just step right upstairs and set it on the mantel or anywheres you like.  I’ll tell her you been here.”

And so he placed it on the mantel, where the north light fell full upon it, waved his hand to it, and went away.  It would tell her all that was in his heart for her.  It would explain himself.  The Red Admiral would assure that!