From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers—­they of the solid crimson head and ivory-barred wings.  The great vermilion-tufted cock-o’-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds the blue kingfishers soared against the blue.  It was a sky world of breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris and pink azalea.

“How is the work going, Louis?” she asked, glancing at him askance.

“It’s stopped.”

“A cause de—?”

“Je n’en sais rien, Valerie.”

She flicked the harness with her whip, absently.  He also leaned back, thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance.

“Has not your desire to paint returned?”

“No.”

“Do you know why?”

“Partly.  I am up against a solid wall.  There is no thoroughfare.”

“Make one.”

“Through the wall?”

“Straight through it.”

“Ah, yes”—­he murmured—­“but what lies beyond?”

“It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand.”

He turned to her:  “You are good for me.  Do you know it?”

“Querida said that, too.  He said that I was an experience; and that all good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly.”

“Do you like Querida?” he asked, curiously.

“Sometimes.”

“Not always?”

“Oh, yes, always more or less.  But sometimes”—­she was silent, her dark eyes dreaming, lips softly parted.

“What do you mean by that?” he inquired, carelessly.

“By what, Louis?” she asked, naively, interrupted in her day-dream.

“By hinting—­that sometimes you like Querida—­more than at others?”

“Why, I do,” she said, frankly.  “Besides, I don’t hint things; I say them.”  She had turned her head to look at him.  Their eyes met in silence for a few moments.

“You are funny about Querida,” she said.  “Don’t you like him?”

“I have no reason to dislike him.”

“Oh!  Is it the case of Sabidius? ’Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare!’”

He laughed uneasily:  “Oh, no, I think not....  You and he are such excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway.”

But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost expressionless.

So they drove past the one-story post office where a group of young people stood awaiting the arrival of the stage with its battered mail bags; past the stump-pond where Valerie had caught her first and only fish, past a few weather-beaten farm houses, a white-washed church, a boarding house or two, a village store, a watering-trough, and then drove up to the wooden veranda where Rita rose from a rocker and came forward with hand outstretched.