"Sometimes," she continued with winsome confidence, "I think, myself, that I am really a great violinist--and then, again,"--she added wistfully,--"I know that I am not. But I am sure that I wouldn't like to be famous, at all."
He laughed. "Fame doesn't seem to matter so much, does it; when one is up here in the hills and the canyon gates are closed."
She echoed his laughter with quick delight. "Did you see that? Did you see those great doors open to let you in, and then close again behind you as if to shut the world outside? But of course you would. Any one who could do that"--she pointed to the canvas--"would not fail to see the canyon gates." With her eyes again upon the picture, she seemed once more to forget the presence of the painter.
Watching her face,--that betrayed her every passing thought and emotion as an untroubled pool mirrors the flowers that grow on its banks or the song-bird that pauses to drink,--the artist--to change her mood--said, "You love the mountains, don't you?"
She turned her face toward him, again, as she answered simply, "Yes, I love the mountains."
"If you were a painter,"--he smiled,--"you would paint them, wouldn't you?"
"I don't know that I would,"--she answered thoughtfully,--"but I would try to get the mountains into my picture, whatever it was. I wonder if you know what I mean?"
"Yes," he answered, "I think I know what you mean; and it is a beautiful thought. You wouldn't paint portraits, would you?"
"I don't think I could," she answered. "It seems to me it would be so hard to get the mountains into a portrait of just anybody. An artist--a great artist, I mean--must make his picture right, mustn't he? And if his picture was a portrait of some one who wasn't very good, and he made it right; he wouldn't be liked very well, would he? No, I don't think I would paint portraits--unless I could paint just the people who would want me to make my picture right."
Aaron King's face flushed at the words that were spoken so artlessly; and he looked at her keenly. But the girl was wholly innocent of any purpose other than to express her thoughts. She did not dream of the force with which her simple words had gone home.