When the last race was ended and the thousands were crowding out through the gates, Saxon heard his host accepting a dinner invitation for the evening.
“I shall have a friend stopping in town on his way East, whom I want you all to meet,” explained Mr. Bellton, the prospective host. “He is one Señor Ribero, an attaché of a South American legation, and he may prove interesting.”
Saxon caught himself almost frowning. He did not care for society’s offerings, but the engagement was made, and he had now no alternative to adding his declaration of pleasure to that of his host. He was, however, silent to taciturnity as Steele’s runabout chugged its way along in the parade of motors and carriages through the gates of the race-track inclosure. In his pupils, the note of melancholy unrest was decided, where ordinarily there was only the hint.
“There is time,” suggested the host, “for a run out the Boulevard; I’d like to show you a view or two.”
The suggestion of looking at a promising landscape ordinarily challenged Saxon’s interest to the degree of enthusiasm. Now, he only nodded.
It was not until Steele, who drove his own car, stopped at the top of the Iroquois Park hill that Saxon spoke. They had halted at the southerly brow of the ridge from which the eye sweeps a radius of twenty miles over purpled hills and polychromatic valleys, to yet other hills melting into a sky of melting turquois. Looking across the colorful reaches, Saxon gave voice to his enthusiasm.
They left the car, and stood on the rocks that jut out of the clay at the road’s edge. Beneath them, the wooded hillside fell away, three hundred feet of precipitous slope and tangle. For a time, Saxon’s eyes were busy with the avid drinking in of so much beauty, then once more they darkened as he wheeled toward his companion.
“George,” he said slowly, “you told me that we were to go to a cabin of yours tucked away somewhere in the hills, and paint landscape. I caught the idea that we were to lead a sort of camp-life—that we were to be hermits except for the companionship of our palettes and nature and each other—and the few neighbors that one finds in the country, and——” The speaker broke off awkwardly.
Steele laughed.
“‘It is so nominated in the bond.’ The cabin is over there—some twenty miles.” He pointed off across the farthest dim ridge to the south. “It is among hills where—but to-morrow you shall see for yourself!”