Magda sped out into the woods.  Hugh’s hand had been none too light, and she was feeling physically and spiritually sore.  Her small soul was aflame with fierce revolt.

Just to assure herself of the liberty of the individual and of the fact that “hurting couldn’t make her good,” she executed a solitary little dance on the green, mossy sward beneath the trees.  It was rather a painful process, since certain portions of her anatomy still tingled from the retributive strokes of justice, but she set her teeth and accomplished the dance with a consciousness of unholy glee that added appreciably to the quality of the performance.

“Are you the Fairy Queen?”

The voice came suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the woods, and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette.  A man was standing leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with whimsical grey eyes.  Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing amongst the trees, an easel and stool evidenced his recent occupation.

Magda returned the scrutiny of the grey eyes.  She was no whit embarrassed and slowly lowered her foot—­she had been toe-dancing—­to its normal position while she surveyed the newcomer with interest.

He was a tall, lean specimen of mankind, and the sunlight, quivering between the interlacing boughs above his head, flickered on to kinky fair hair that looked almost absurdly golden contrasted with the brown tan of the face beneath it.  It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a dogged, squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit which was one of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen dark-grey eyes she encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of her father’s that it seemed ridiculous the English language could only supply the one word “grey” to describe things that were so totally dissimilar.

“They’re like eyes with little fires behind them,” Magda told herself.  Then smiled at their owner radiantly.

“Are you the Fairy Queen?” he repeated gravely.

She regarded him with increasing approval.

“Yes,” she assented graciously.  “These are my woods.”

“Then I’m afraid I’ve been trespassing in your majesty’s domain,” admitted the grey-eyed man.  “But your woods are so beautiful I simply had to try and make a sketch of them.”

Magda came back to earth with promptitude.

“Oh, are you an artist?” she demanded eagerly.

He nodded, smiling.

“I’m trying to be.”

“Let me look.”  She flashed past him and planted herself in front of the easel.

“Mais, c’est bon!” she commented coolly.  “Me, I know.  We have good pictures at home.  This is a good picture.”

The man with the grey eyes looked suitably impressed.

“I’m glad you find it so,” he replied meekly.  “I think it wants just one thing more.  If”—­he spoke abstractly—­“if the Fairy Queen were resting just there”—­his finger indicated the exact point on the canvas—­“tired, you know, because she had been dancing to one of the Mortals—­lucky beggar, wasn’t he?—­why, I think the picture would be complete.”