"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.