He let her go presently and said:
"It is late for you to be out; come in now, the night air is beginning to be chilly and you'll catch a cold."
"Oh, no!" she naïvely responded, "let's us stay out yer, they're a smokin' in ther, an' hit's so nice ter be out yer." Her mountain dialect, as filtered through her pure, peculiarly musical voice, lost all its harshness and became a fitting expression of a part of the fascinating enigma of her character. "Ye'v' ben away so long, John, an' sometimes I wus afeared to go er-sleep 'cause ye wus gone, an' 'cause I'd dream ye wus dead."
"Well, come in now," he gently urged, drawing the long pale brush of her hair through his hand and passing on into the cabin.
She looked after him, the smile slowly fading out of her face and giving place to that half-vacant, mildly hopeless expression which it usually wore. She put her rather large but finely chiseled hands on top of her head, with the fingers laced together, and with her elbows extended gazed listlessly at the sky. She felt a vague sense of disappointment blended with a delicious happiness. When Reynolds entered the cabin, White and his wife were leaning over a mere pretense of fire and smoking their pipes, with such abandonment to the luxury that they merely glanced at him as he entered; but mountain politeness overcame the tobacco at last, and they got up, greeting him warmly. He shook hands with them in turn, asking about their health, but declined to sit down, preferring after a few commonplace inquiries, to go into his own room and be alone.
His first sensation on entering his apartment was one of disgust at its rough and uninviting aspect. Indirectly the question was assailing him: why had he ever been content in such a place? A query of this nature may arise in one's mind without any definite form, impressing itself by a sort of implication and indirect reflection from a throng of comparisons involuntarily and almost unconsciously made. Reynolds' nature was intensely virile, his passions powerful and his imagination tropical. It goes with the saying that his feelings and tastes were subject to violent and sudden changes. He usually had, however, perfect self-control and an outward appearance of calmness under the most trying circumstances. But let the check-rein once break and his fiery passions get control of the bit, then nothing that passion demands could escape him. He was aware of this; he knew the need of self-restraint, for at the bottom his was a noble soul, full of self-sacrifice and generous, liberal manliness.
On the floor by his easel lay a scrap of white paper with something scrawled upon it. He picked it up mechanically and saw that Milly had been trying to copy the dog-sketch that still rested on the easel. It was a poor, crude scratch, such as a little child might have accomplished, showing in its stiff, hesitating lines the limitations of the girl's vague notion of art. He smiled at this evidence of the first stirrings of culture in a handful of almost barren soil. Art is forever dropping seeds that germinate under all the exigencies of weather. Few of the shootlets live to show more than a tender point above the surface of the ground, but their number is legion and each spike gives to the air an infinitesimal trace of fragrance which cheers us as we breathe.
While he stood looking at her work, Milly came into the room through a doorway that led from the kitchen. He was still smiling when he looked towards her and said:
"Did you draw this, Milly?"
She put her hands over her face and leaned against the wall. The light from a large lamp on the table gave to her figure the effect of a strong sketch in charcoal. He noted her attitude with an artist's eye, and with a man's eyes, too. There was a bird-like grace in the droop of her shoulders and in the fine curves of her body and limbs. Her flaxen hair gave forth just a modicum of golden light.