A smile broke over her face--her mood changing as quickly as the sunlight breaks through a cloud. "I know you are not"--she said--"a _bad_ man wouldn't have wanted to paint this place as you have painted it."
She turned to go.
"But wait!" he cried, "you haven't told me--will you teach me to know your mountains as you know them?"
"I'm sure I cannot say," she answered smiling, as she moved away.
"But at least, we will meet again," he urged.
She laughed gaily, "Why not? The mountains are for you as well as for me; and though the hills _are_ so big, the trails are narrow, and the passes very few."
With another laugh, she slipped away--her brown dress, that, in the shifty lights under the thick foliage, so harmonized with the colors of bush and vine and tree and rock, being so quickly lost to the artist's eye that she seemed almost to vanish into the scene before him.
But presently, from beyond the willow wall, he heard her voice again--singing to the accompaniment of the mountain stream. Softly, the melody died away in the distance--losing itself, at last, in the deeper organ-tones of the mountain waters.
For some minutes, the artist stood listening--thinking he heard it still.
Aaron King did not, that night, tell Conrad Lagrange of his adventure in the spring glade.
Chapter XVII
Confessions in the Spring Glade
All the next day, while he worked upon his picture in the glade, Aaron King listened for that voice in the organ-like music of the distant waters. Many times, he turned to search the flickering light and shade of the undergrowth, behind him, for a glimpse of the girl's brown dress and winsome face.
The next day she came.
The artist had been looking long at a splash of sunlight that fell upon the gray granite boulder which was set in the green turf, and had turned to his canvas for--it seemed to him--only an instant. When he looked again at the boulder, she was standing there--had, apparently, been standing there for some time, waiting with smiling lips and laughing eyes for him to see her.
A light creel hung by its webbed strap from her shoulder; in her hand, she carried a slender fly rod of good workmanship. Dressed in soft brown, with short skirts and high laced boots, and her wavy hair tucked under a wide, felt hat; with her blue eyes shining with fun, and her warmly tinted skin glowing with healthful exercise; she appeared--to the artist--more as some mythical spirit of the mountains, than as a maiden of flesh and blood. The manner of her coming, too, heightened the impression. He had heard no sound of her approach--no step, no rustle of the underbrush. He had seen no movement among the bushes--no parting of the willows in the wall of green. There had been no hint of her nearness. He could not even guess the direction from which she had come.
At first, he could scarce believe his eyes, and sat motionless in his surprise. Then her merry laugh rang out--breaking the spell.
Springing from his seat, he went forward. "Are you a spirit?" he cried.
"You must be something unreal, you know--the way you appear and disappear.
The last time, you came out of the music of the waters, and went again the same way. To-day, you come out of the air, or the trees, or, perhaps, that gray boulder that is giving me such trouble."
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.
"You are not supposed to know that I am doing anything," she retorted.
"You have been peeking again."
"You were so still--I feared you had vanished," he laughed. "If you'll keep talking to me, I'll know you are there, and will be good."
"Sure it won't bother?"
"Sure," he answered.
"Well, then, _you_ talk to me, and I'll answer."
"I have a confession to make," he said, carefully studying the gray tones of the alder trunk beyond the gray boulder.
"A confession?"
"Yes, I want to get it over--so it won't bother me."
"Something about me?"
"Yes."