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198 countryside. This was no peasant type, and the crisp monosyllable was apparently intended to remind him of the fact.

"Would you mind if I tried a water color of one end of your garden?" Conkling repeated, parading the folded stool and easel and thumb box, which had obviously escaped her attention.

The rose shears went on with their clipping. She was weighing his request, and as she did so she reverted oddly back to the child type. He found it hard to think of her as a woman. She seemed disturbed by the matter-of-factness with which he had put a matter-of-fact question. But it was plain that he was an outlander, a stranger unversed in the traditions of those reticent byways.

"If you wish to," she finally said, without stopping in her work.

It struck Conkling as odd that her face should go pale over a decision so trivial. It struck him as equally odd, when he unfolded stool and easel in the shadow of the cedar hedge, that the thin face should just as suddenly flush again. For he had