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Lake Wauchong is the crowning charm of that whole north New Jersey wilderness, rich though its variety is—watercourses hard to equal in sheer loveliness; lonely mountains from whose steeps look majesty and awe; stretches of stony desolation and of gloomy, bittern-haunted swamp that seem the fitting borderland of an inferno. At the southwestern end of the lake it receives the waters of a creek by way of a small cataract. In the spring, especially in the early spring, when there is most water on the cataract and when the foliage is at its freshest, most exquisite green, the early morning sunbeams make of that little corner of the lake a sort of essence and epitome of the lovely childhood of Nature.

On the next morning but one after the adventure of the studio in the storm, Roger was industriously sketching in a view of this cataract, his canvas on an easel before which he was standing—he always stood at his work. Across his range of vision shot a canoe, a girl kneeling in it and wielding the paddle with expert grace. He instantly recognized her. “Hello!” he called out friendlily—after a curiously agitated moment of confusion and recovery.

She turned her head, smiled. With a single skillful dip she rounded the canoe so that it shot to the shore within a few feet of where he stood. “Good morning, Chang,” said she. “Did you miss me at tea—or, rather, chocolate—yesterday?”

“I didn’t expect you,” replied he.

“You didn’t invite me.”

“That was ill-mannered, wasn’t, it? But, no—I forgot. We said good-by forever, didn’t we? Well, it was safer to prepare for the worst in a world as uncertain as this. Aren’t you rather early?”

She looked a little confused. “I’m very energetic for the first few days after I get to the country,” she explained. “Besides, I’m dreadfully restless of late.... Are you working?”

“I was.”

“Oh—I’m disturbing you.” She made a movement to push off. He smiled in a noncommittal way, but said nothing. She did not conceal her discontent with treatment of a kind to which she apparently was not used. “You might at least have the politeness to say no. I’d not take advantage of it,” said she—a rebuke for his rudeness in her raillery.

“I was debating something.... I need you in my picture. But posing is tiresome work.”

She brightened. “I’d be glad to. Will you let me? I do so wish to be of some use. How long would it take?”

“Not long—that is, not long any one morning,” was his apologetic assurance.

“You mean—several mornings?” said she, a mingling of longing and hesitation in her expressive features.

“I work slowly.” The more he considered the matter the more necessary she seemed to his picture. His artist’s selfishness was aroused. “I’m sure you’d not mind,” said he, deliberately using a tone that would make refusal difficult, ungracious.

A curious strained expression came into her eyes as she reflected. “I—I—don’t know what to say.”

“You think I’m asking heavy pay for my hospitality?”

“No—no, indeed,” protested she earnestly. “I can’t tell you what I was thinking.”

The more he considered the idea the apparition of her in that graceful posture in the canoe had suggested the more it seemed an inspiration. He was regarding her now with the artist’s eye only. She leaned on her paddle, lost in reverie; the look of the self-satisfied, over-petted American girl faded from her face; the sunbeams flung a golden glamour over her yellow hair and her delicate skin. He saw alluring possibilities of idealizing her face into the center and climax of the dreamy romance he was going to try to make of his first American picture. His original impulse to get rid of her as a useless, perhaps disquieting intruder had gone altogether. He was resolved to have this providential model. “I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said he, “but I really need you. It’d be a—a service to”—he smiled—“to art.”

She seemed not to hear. Presently she compressed her lips, looked at him defiantly—a strange look that somehow disquieted him for an instant. “Where do you want me to put myself?” she asked, stepping into the canoe.

They spent half an hour in trying various positions and poses before he got just what he wanted. His impersonal way of treating her, his frank comments, some of them flattering, others the reverse, amused her immensely. But he was as unconscious of her amusement as of her personality or his own. She obeyed him without a protest, patiently held the pose he asked—held it full fifteen minutes. He had a way—the way of the man who knows what he is about—that inspired her with respect and made her feel she was at something worth while. “That’ll do beautifully,” he said at last. “You must be tired.”

“I can stand it a while longer,” she assured him.

“Not a second. I’ve enough for to-day. And I don’t want to frighten you off. I mustn’t tempt you to leave me in the lurch—disappear—never show up again.”

“I’ve promised,” said she. “I’ll keep my word. Besides”—she flushed, with eyes sparkling; her smile was merry, but embarrassed—“I’m not doing this for nothing.”

“We haven’t talked business yet, have we?” said he, not a bit embarrassed. “You can have anything you like, within reason.”

She laughed at him. “I want more than money. I want your valuable time. In exchange for my services as model you must amuse me. I’m lonely and bored—and full of things I want to forget.”

“How much amusement per pose?” said he.

“Oh—I shan’t be hard. Say—an hour.”

“The bargain’s closed.”

She paddled ashore, seated herself on a log a short distance before him, and rested while he filled in his notes. He glanced at her after a few minutes, was about to speak; instead he gave a grunt of satisfaction, fell to sketching her face; for the thoughts that were gilding her reverie gave her features precisely the expression of exalted, ethereal longing which he wished to put into the face in his picture. He worked feverishly, hoping she would not move and dissolve the spell until he had what he needed—enough to fix that expression.

A quarrel between two robins over a worthless twig which neither wanted startled her, drove the spiritual look from her features.

“But I got it,” said he. “Thank you.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“You’ve given me a second sitting—much better, because you didn’t realize it.”

“May I see?”

His sudden alarm revealed the profoundly modest man, uneasy about the merits of his unfinished work. “Not yet,” said he positively. “Wait till there’s something to look at.”

“Very well,” she acquiesced.

A certain note in her voice made him laugh. “You don’t care in the least about the picture—do you?”

“Yes, indeed,” protested she. But the attempt to conceal his having hit upon the truth was far from successful. She realized it herself. “I care only about the pay,” confessed she.

“We can talk while I work, now.”

She protested. “No, that isn’t honest. I gave you my whole attention. You must pay in the same way. You must do your best to amuse me.”

“Well?”

“Come here, and sit on this log.”

He obeyed. “You deserve better pay,” said he. “I never had a professional model who behaved so well.”

“Do you know, I never did anything so obediently in my whole life,” declared she. “I don’t understand myself.” There was seriousness behind the mirth in the glance she flung at him. “I’m a little afraid of you. I half believe you hypnotize me. You—seem to—to put to sleep my ordinary, every-day self and to wake up one that’s usually asleep—one I’ve only known—until—until recently—as a—a sort of troublesome ghost that haunts me from time to time.”

He, thinking of his picture, was only half attending to her. “But you’ll marry the man with the money, all right,” said he absently.

She startled. “How did you know?” she demanded. “Have you found out who I am?”

“Certainly. You’re Rix, model to Chang.... No, I was joking. I know only what you told me yesterday—or, rather, what you enabled me to guess.”

“And you approve of my marrying—that way?”

“I’d hardly be guilty of the impertinence of either approving or disapproving.”

“Frankness wouldn’t be impertinence—between you and me. At least, that’s the way I feel about it. Do you really approve of—of marriage for—for other reasons than love?”

“Heartily.”

A long silence. Then she, with an effort: “When I got back home night before last all that happened up there seemed unreal—absolutely unreal—like a dream.”

“Even the biscuit and the chocolate?”

“Even you,” she replied.

Her tone made his wandering attention concentrate, made him glance swiftly at her.

She smiled. “Don’t be alarmed,” said she. “There’s not the slightest cause.”

“Sure?” inquired he jestingly. “You see, I’m not used to young girls—American girls. You talk so freely. If I weren’t an American I’d misunderstand.”

“What would it matter if you did?” retorted she.

“To be sure—it wouldn’t matter at all,” he admitted. “Do go on.”

“If it weren’t that my knowing you—this way—would always seem unreal—not at all a part of life—I’d not dare come. Now, don’t misunderstand. That doesn’t mean I’m falling in love with you—at least, I don’t think it does.” Dreamily—“No, I don’t think so.”

“Depressing,” said he, with an awkward attempt at humor. He did not like these frank personalities from his model—these alarming skirtings of the subject he wished to discuss or consider with no woman. It was interesting, refreshingly interesting, this unheard-of, direct way of dealing with a matter invariably ignored by an unmarried, marriageable girl—that is, so far as his experience went, it was ignored—but, perhaps, in the America growing up during his absence—yes, this interesting audacity was disquieting.

“No—I’ve thought it out carefully, Chang,” pursued she. “I’m not afraid of falling in love with you. It’s simply that what you are—what you stand for—appeals to my other self—the self I’m soon going to wrap in a shroud and lay in a grave—forever.... Coming here is a kind of dissipation for me. But I shan’t lose control of myself.” She nodded positively, and there was a shrewd flash in her eyes.

“I’ll back you up,” said he. “So you needn’t worry. Falling in love is entirely out of my line.”

He saw that she had no more belief in this than the next woman would have had. For, little though he knew about women—the realities as to women, the intricacies of women—he had not failed to learn that every young or youngish woman regards herself as an expert at compelling men to love, as a certain victor whenever she cares to exert herself to win. “You have your career, I mine,” he went on. “They have nothing in common. So we needn’t waste time worrying about impossibilities.”

“That’s true,” exclaimed she with enthusiasm.

He changed the subject to safer things, acting as if the whole matter of their relations were settled. But, in reality, he was profoundly disturbed. If the scheme of his picture had not taken such firm hold upon him—the hold that compels an artist, in face of any debt to consequences, however heavy—he would have contrived to rid himself of her that day for good and all. He had had too many adventures not to know the dangers filling the woodland in the springtime for a young man and a young woman with no one to interrupt. He did not like his own interest in her; he was little reassured by her explanations as to her interest in him, though he told himself he must be careful not to judge American girls by foreign standards. But the picture must be made, and she was indispensable.

The bright weather held for several days. Every morning artist and model met near the cascade and worked and talked alternately until toward lunch time. She came earlier and earlier, until it was hardly six when her canoe shot round the bend which divided off that end of the lake into a little bay. He was always there before her. “Do you spend the night here?” she asked.

“Why, this is late for me,” he replied. “I have breakfast before sunrise and go up to the studio for an hour’s work before I come down here. You see, light—sunlight—is all-important with me. So I go to bed with the chickens.”

“You don’t live at the studio?” Then she reddened and hastily cried: “No—don’t answer. I forgot.”

At her suggestion they had been careful about letting slip things that might betray their identity in the outside world. This had become a fetich with them, as if betrayal would break the charm and end their friendship. “I never had anything like a romance in my life before,” she had said. “I suppose I seem very silly to you, but I want to do the best I can with this. You’ll humor me, won’t you?” And he agreed, with a superior smile at her folly—a smile not nearly so sincere as he fancied, for, like all men of his stamp, he was still the boy and would be all his life.

Though she came earlier she lingered later; once it was noon before she slowly paddled away in her graceful canoe with its high, curved ends. His uneasiness about what was going on in her head ended with her second visit; for she did not again speak of personal things and treated him in a charming, comradelike fashion that would have quieted the suspicions of a greater egotist than he. She made him do most of the talking—about painting and sculpture, about books and plays—the men he had known in Paris—about his curious or amusing experiences in out-of-the-way parts of Europe. It was flattering to have such a pretty listener, one so tireless, so interested; her many questions, the changes in her expressive countenance, the subtle sense of the sympathetic she radiated, were all proof convincing of her eagerness to hear, of her delight in what she heard.

After many days—not so very many, either—when their friendship was well into the stage of intimacy, she began to try to draw him out on the subject of women. At first she went about it adroitly—and an adroiter cross-examiner never put questions seemingly more trivial in tones seemingly more careless or lay in wait behind eyes seemingly more innocent. But she set her traps in vain. Of the love affairs of other men he would talk, taking even more than the necessary care to avoid things a young girl was supposed not to know or understand. Of his own love affairs he would say nothing—not a hint, not so much as a suggestion that romance had ever gladdened his youth. That chance allusion to the mysterious Syrian woman was his first and last indiscretion, if anything so vague could be called an indiscretion. So, she abandoned the tactics of guile and attacked him frankly.

“You certainly are trustworthy,” said she. “You have a wonderful sense of honor.”

“What’s this about?” inquired he, ignorant of her train of thought.

“About women,” explained she.

“Oh, about women,” repeated he. “It’s time to begin work again.”

“Not for twenty minutes. You kept me at it ten minutes’ overtime—and you agreed I was to have double pay for overtime.”

He sat down again, a little cross.

“As I was saying,” pursued she, “you never talk about yourself and women—except the Syrian girl. Were you terribly in love with her?”

“That’s been so long ago. I don’t recall——”

“I’m sure she was crazy about you—and that you got tired of her—and broke her heart——”

He laughed. “She’s married to a friend of mine, and she weighs a ton. They’ve got a rug shop and how they do swindle rich Americans! Did I ever tell you about how two men in Paris bought a rug for eleven thousand francs and sold it to an American for——”

“Why do you always dodge away? Are you really a woman hater?”

“Not I. Just the reverse.”

“And you’ve been in love?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Her smile kept bravely on, but her tone wasn’t quite the same as she said, “Really in love?”

“Madly. Lots of times.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean once—the once. I somehow feel that you’ve had a great love in your life—a love that has saddened you—has made you put women out of your life.”

He was laughing frankly at her. “What a romancer you are,” cried he. “It’s very evident that you’ve had no experience. If you had, you’d know that isn’t the way of love at all. Anyone who can catch it once can catch it any number of times. It’s a disease, I tell you. You want to fall in love and you proceed to do it, taking whoever happens to be convenient.”

This seemed to content her. “I see you’ve never been in love,” said she. “You’ve simply had experience. I like that. I hate a man who hasn’t had experience. Not that I ever thought you hadn’t—no, indeed. In the first five minutes I knew you I said to myself, ‘Here’s a man who has been over the road.’ I could tell by the way you took hold.”

“Took hold!” cried he.

“That’s it—took hold—made me like you—made me interested in you.”

He looked uncomfortable—glanced at his watch.

“Oh, so much has happened to you. And nothing has ever happened to me—nothing but this,” she sighed.

“But this!” laughed he. “Don’t you call it something—to be clandestinely an artist’s model? Think how horrified your prim, proper, pious people would be if they knew!”

“What kind of people do you think I come from?” she inquired, gazing at him quizzically.

“That’s tabooed,” he answered. “I’ve never speculated about it. When your canoe rounds that bend yonder I never follow. You begin and end at the bend.”

“I don’t see how you can help wondering,” mused she. “I wonder a great deal about you. Not that I want to know. I’d rather wonder—fancy it as I please—differently every day. You see, I haven’t much to think about—much that’s interesting. Honestly, don’t you wonder—at all—about me?”

“I’ve always been that way about my friends,” replied he, and went on to explain sincerely: “They interest me only as they appear to me. Why should I bother about what they are to other people—people I don’t know and don’t care to know?”

“Isn’t that strange!” mused she. “Do you really mean it?” She blushed, hastily added: “Of course, I know you mean it. You mustn’t mind my saying that. You see, the people I know are entirely different. That’s why I feel this is all—unreal—a dream.... You honestly don’t care about wealth—and social position—and all that? Not a bit?”

“Why should I?” said he indifferently. “It isn’t in my game—and one cares only about the things that are in his game.”

“That other game—it seems a very poor sort to you, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, I know it does. It seems so to me, whenever I’m—here—and even when I’m not here.”

“Why bother about such things?” said he in the tone that indicates total lack of interest.

After a pause she said: “You may not believe it, but I’m a frightful snob—out there.”

“But not here. There’s nothing here to be snob about—thank God!”

“Yes—I’m as different as possible—out there,” she went on. “There are people I detest whom I’m sweet to because of what they are socially. I’m like the rest of the girls—crazy about social position and fond of snubbing people—and——”

“Don’t tell me about it,” he interrupted gently, but with an expression in his straight, honest eyes that made her blush and hang her head. “I’m sorry for what you are when the black magician who rules beyond the bend takes possession of you. But what he does to you doesn’t change what the white magic makes of you here.”

Her eyes, her whole face lighted up. “The white magic,” she repeated softly. After a brief reverie she came back to the subject and went on, “I told you because I—I’m ashamed to be a fraud with you.... I wonder if you’re really as big and honest as you seem? Nobody is—out there. They’re mean and petty!—when you see through what they pretend to be—pretend even to themselves. I’m just as big a fraud as the rest. And I often convince myself I’m sweet and good and— If I could only—” There she stopped, leaving her wish unexpressed but easy to imagine.

“The way to keep the little things out is to fill one’s mind with the big things,” said he. “But you’re not to blame for being what your surroundings compel.”

“Do you think I could be different?” she asked, waiting in a sort of breathlessness for his answer.

“I’ve not thought about it,” was his depressing answer. “Offhand I should say not. You’re at the age when almost everybody does a little thinking. But that’ll soon stop, and you’ll be what you were molded to be from babyhood.”

“I know I don’t amount to much,” said she humbly. “Out there—under the black magic—I’m vain and proud. But here—I feel I’m just nothing.”

“You’re a superb model,” said he consolingly. “Really—superb.”

“Please don’t mock at me. Honestly, don’t you think I’m commonplace?”

He gave her that fine, gentle smile of his, particularly fine coming from such a big, masculine sort of man. And he said, “Nothing that the sun shines on is commonplace.”

She developed strong curiosity as to the general aspects of his affairs—as to his hopes and fears for the future. Her efforts to draw him out on these subjects amused him. His frank confession that he was unknown in America threw her quite off the track; it never occurred to her that he might be known abroad. “And you have worked many years?” she said.

“All my life.”

She looked tenderly sympathetic distress. “Doesn’t your not being recognized discourage you?” she said.

“Not a bit,” declared he, with every indication of sincerity. “Everything worth while takes time. Anyhow, I don’t much care. My living is secure. You see, I’m quite rich.”

Her eyes opened wide. “Rich!” she exclaimed. “Really? Why, I thought—” There she halted, blushing.

“Oh, yes. I’ve got forty thousand—not to speak of my land.”

“Forty—thousand—a year! That’s very good.” And her face revealed that her brain was busy and what it was busy about.

He laughed loudly. “Forty thousand a year!” he cried. “No—two thousand a year.”

Her chagrin was pitiful. “Oh!” she exclaimed dismally. “I thought you said you were rich.”

“And I am. Why, when I think of how I used to live on less than two thousand francs a year I feel like a Rothschild.” He tried to keep his face and his tone serious as he added: “What’s the matter? Why do you look so woe-begone?”

“Nothing. Only— You gave me such a shock! For a minute I thought you were—were different.”

He took advantage of her mournful abstraction to slip back to his work. So absorbed was she that she did not observe how he was “cheating” her, though all his other attempts to do it had been promptly detected and stopped. From time to time he looked at her and puzzled over the cause of her deep gloom. Finally he decided to interrupt. A mischievous look came into his eyes. He said: “You thought of transferring yourself from that other rich man?”

She was overwhelmed with embarrassment. Then she met his laughing eyes with a brave attempt at mockery. “Well—I’d rather marry a rich man I liked than one I didn’t.”

“Naturally. But forget about me, please. I’m not a candidate, remember.” He was glad of this chance to remind her of his views as to marriage.

“Never fear,” said she, forcing a laugh and a look of coquettish scorn. “We’re equally safe from each other.”

On the eighth morning it began to drizzle at dawn, and by the time artist and model should have been at work a heavy, cold rain was falling. However, Chang in his waterproofs walked down to the lake shore. He had to take a walk—he always took a walk—no matter what the weather; why not in that direction? As he drew near the cascade he was amazed to see the canoe beached in the usual place. And there, huddled under a tree, as doleful as the shivering birds, stood Rix. He hesitated, started quietly back the way he had come. “No,” said he to himself, “she might catch sight of me. Then she’d be offended—and what would become of my picture?” So he turned about—in obedience to these counsels of calm and unprejudiced good sense.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded with friendly severity as he came forward. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”

At sound of his voice her drooping form straightened ecstatically. At sight of him, looking more tremendous than ever in the big waterproofs, she gave a smile like a sunburst. “You’re frightfully late!” she reproached.

“Late! We can’t work to-day.”

“You didn’t tell me not to come if it rained,” said she, with a convincing air of innocence. “And—I didn’t want to lose a day’s pay.”

He was still frowning. “I came very near not coming at all,” said he. “It was by the merest accident that I took my walk in this direction.”

“But—you did,” said she slyly.

“Why not?” was his carefully careless reply. “I walk, rain or shine.”

“I don’t mind rain, either—when I’m prepared for it,” said she cheerfully. “You don’t know how fascinating canoeing in the rain is.”

But he was not convinced. He stood staring gloomily out over the lake, as if he were seeing formidable enemies approaching under cover of the thick, blue mist. “I’ve got to go in a few minutes,” said he almost curtly. “I’ve arranged for a trip to town, as I can’t work to-day.”

“To sell a picture?”

“I haven’t any. Those from the other side aren’t here yet. Anyhow, I’m going to show only American work.”

A long pause—an uncomfortable pause. Then she said in her artless, impersonal way: “I should think a wife would be of great assistance to an artist——”

“As a roper-in, you mean?” he interrupted fiercely. “No real painter would stoop to anything so degrading to his art and to himself.”

“Yet you’ve told me of all sorts of queer schemes you’ve put up to lure in buyers,” she said.

“An artist who marries is a fool—and worse,” said he sourly. “If he’s happily married his imagination is smothered to death. If he’s unhappily married it’s stabbed to death.”

She listened sweetly and patiently. “The subject of marriage is on my mind to-day,” said she with confiding and childlike innocence.

“It usually is on the minds of young girls,” said he, big and frowning.

“But my—my affairs are near the crisis,” proceeded she. “And one reason I came through the rain was that I wanted your advice.”

He shook his big frame, making the water fly as from the fur of a great, shaggy dog that has been in swimming. “I don’t give advice,” said he ungraciously. “When you give advice you make yourself responsible for the consequences. Besides, I don’t know enough about you to be able to judge.”

Her look up at him was the essence of implicit trust. “You know more about me than anyone in the world—more than I know myself.”

He laughed shortly. “I know nothing about you. Girls are not in my line.”

Her pretty face, the prettier for the dreariness all round, now took on an expression of hurt feelings. “What’s the matter, Chang?” she asked gently. “You’re not a bit friendly to-day.”

His face could not but soften before this sweet appeal. He said in a kindlier tone: “I think you ought to go home. I’m sure you’ll catch cold.”

She looked immensely relieved. “Oh, that’s why you’re cross, is it?” said she gayly. “Don’t worry about me, Chang. I’m as dry and snug as can be. Now, do be kind to me. I don’t see how I’m going to marry Pete—that is, this man. He’s a nice fellow—good-looking—has everything I want—but— Ye gods! He’s such a rotter!”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a man—or woman, for there are lots and lots of female rotters—it’s a person who—well, you always know just what they are going to do before they do it, and just what they’re going to say before they say it.”

“That sounds like good marrying material. You know, you don’t want surprises in married life.”

“Chang, how can I live through it?” she cried despondently.

“You say you’ve got lots of tastes, all expensive. So—marry him.”

“He’s really very good-looking,” pursued Rix, watching him out of the corners of her eyes. “And he dresses beautifully—has everything just right. There isn’t a thing against him—except—” And there she halted, as if she were not quite certain whether after all there was a positive objection to the man.

“Except—what?” inquired he, impatient at the long pause at the most exciting point in the recital.

She secretly delighted in the success of her ruse. But she said plaintively: “Oh, you’re not interested. You’re not listening.”

“I’m sure you’re catching a hideous cold. Of all the absurd, silly performances——”

“Now, don’t lecture on health. I simply can’t stand it. As I was about to say when you interrupted me——”

“I didn’t interrupt you,” protested he.

“Not paying attention is interrupting,” said she. “Anyhow, you’re interrupting now. What I want to say is, the only thing against him is that I don’t love him.”

This seemed to cheer the big, dark, young man. With a certain gayety he replied: “But you soon will. You’ve been well brought up, haven’t you? Well, that means you are—just girl—ready to be whatever your husband chooses to make of you.”

“That’s true of most girls, Chang”—he winced each time she gave him that name—“but it isn’t true of me—at least, not any more. You’ve put all sorts of ideas into my head.”

He started back in dismay before her accusing, reproachful face, so sad, so serious. “I? Put ideas into your head? Why, you were buzzing and boiling with ’em the first time I saw you.”

“But they didn’t amount to anything until you——”

“That’s like a woman!” he exclaimed indignantly. “Trying to shift responsibility to some one else.”

“But you have a tremendous influence over me.”

“Rubbish! Have I ever tried to get influence over you?”

“I don’t know how you got it,” was her maddeningly feminine evasion.

He gave a kind of snort. “Next thing you’ll be accusing me of advising you not to marry this rich man you’re engaged to.”

“Not quite engaged,” corrected she. “He wants me to be. And,” she went on with meek obstinacy, “while you didn’t advise me against it in so many words——”

“Now, Rix,” he almost shouted, pointing his finger at her, “you stop right there!”

“Please, Chang—come in out of the rain. And don’t talk so loud; it makes me nervous. I’m almost hysterical as it is.”

He looked at her in terror. All that would be needed completely to upset him would be for her to have hysterics. He moved nearer her, went on in a soothing, persuasive tone: “I advised you to marry him. I showed you it’s the only thing for you to do.”

“And such talk was unworthy of you,” said she, like a rebuking angel. “You didn’t really mean it. You know you wouldn’t stoop to do such a thing yourself.”

His frank countenance had quite a wild look, so agitated and confused was he by her swift twistings and turnings, so alarmed was he as he felt the awful danger approaching. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and your affairs—or, rather, you are talking about them. Keep me out of this.”

“But how can I?” argued she gently, looking admiringly up at him. “You’ve become the big influence in my life. If I had known you earlier I’d have been very different. Even now I feel as if a great change were coming over me——”

“It’s the cold you’re catching,” interrupted he, in desperate attempt to be jocose and create a diversion. “You must go straight home.”

“Chang,” she said, laying her hand on his arm, “if you were rich, instead of poor, would you talk to me like this?”

“Now, Rix—stop that nonsense.”

“Don’t, Chang,” she pleaded. “You realize, just as well as I do, that we’ve made a frightful mistake.”

He did not venture an answer.

“You knew it as soon as you saw me this morning—didn’t you?” continued she. “Yes, I saw it in your eyes. I felt it in your——”

He suddenly seized her by both shoulders, looked into her eyes searchingly. “This isn’t a bit like you, Rix. What are you up to?”

She simply gazed at him—a gaze he found it hard to withstand; yet he could not shift his charmed eyes.

“You’re trying to lead me on. Why?” he demanded.

“Because we love each other, Chang,” she said as simply and sweetly as a child.

He laughed gently. “What a romancer you are! Fortunately, I’m a man. I don’t take advantage of a baby.”

“I’m twenty-two.”

“And as ignorant of the world as a baby,” declared he, like grandfather to grandchild.

“I know what I want when I see it, just as well as you do, Chang,” she replied steadily. “Better—because you’re making me do all the talking—which isn’t gentlemanly of you.” Her eyes filled with tears—and very lovely they looked—like dew-drenched violets. “If it wasn’t that you’re holding back simply because you’re poor I’d not forgive you so easily.”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders, turned away abruptly. He strode to the edge of the lake and debated with himself. When he came back to her he was serene though grave. At sight of his expression, which she had eagerly awaited, she shivered. “Rix,” he said—and all the fine frankness and simplicity of his nature were in his eyes and his voice—“it’s lucky for you that I’ve lived a little, or we might be dragging each other into a fearful mess. You think you’ve fallen in love—don’t you?”

“I know it, Chang,” she answered, undaunted.

“Well, I know you haven’t fallen in love with me. You’ve simply fallen in love with love. Your imagination has been giddied by this little adventure that seems so romantic to you. And the day’ll come when you’ll thank me for having had the sense to understand you and to understand that my own strong liking for you isn’t love, either.”

“It’s what I call love,” said she, a solemn, wistful look in the eyes she fixed on him. “Don’t you miss me and think of me all the time when we aren’t together—just as I do? Don’t you come earlier and earlier—just as I do? Didn’t you fight against coming in the rain to-day, just as I did? Weren’t you dreadfully afraid you’d be disappointed, just as I was? And didn’t you simply have to come——”

He suddenly lost his temper. “This is too exasperating!” he cried. “I’ve done wrong to let you come here. I was innocent enough in it——”

“You couldn’t have kept me away,” she interrupted with a kind of childish glee. “The mischief was done the first day—over the chocolate. Wasn’t it, Chang?—honestly, wasn’t it?”

“You’re a nice little girl, but——”

She cut him off again: “If you knew how I fought that evening and night and all the next day and night—and how early I started out to find you. Had you begun to hunt for me?”

“No,” said he, more curt than convincing.

“Then what were you thinking about—that first morning down by the waterfall?”

He flushed guiltily. Very poor, indeed, at all kinds of deception was Chang—except, possibly, self-deception.

“I watched you for half an hour. You were sketching a face, Chang—instead of the waterfall. Whose face was it?”

“Yours,” he admitted, as if the matter were of no consequence. With a smile of patient indulgence he went on: “Oh, if you’d had experience! But you haven’t. That’s why you’re carrying on like this. Now, listen to me, child——”

“I like Rix better,” she interposed.

“No matter,” he said, with a gesture of impatient brushing away. “I don’t love you. I won’t marry you. And you’ve got to stop proposing to me. I never heard of such vanity! What would people think of you?”

“You’ve taught me not to mind what people think. You said you despised——”

“No matter what I said! What will you think of yourself? What will I think of you?”

“Why, that I love you,” said she sweetly.

He looked hopelessly at her, threw out his arms in a gesture of despair. “A baby—just a baby. Go home and grow up!” he cried, and strode swiftly away with a great swashing of the skirts of his long coat and a great swishing of the disturbed undergrowth of the wilderness.