"But don't you ever dance to please your friends?"
"Oh, no--I don't dance to _please_ any one--only just when it's for myself--when nothing else will do--when I _must_. Of course, sometimes, Myra or Brian Oakley or Mrs. Oakley are with me--but they don't matter, you know. They are so much a part of me that I don't mind."
"I wonder if you will ever dance for me?"
Again, she shook her head. "I don't think so. How could I? You see, you are not like anybody that I have ever known."
"But I saw you the other evening, you remember."
"Yes, but I didn't know you were there. If I had known, I wouldn't have danced."
All the while--as she talked--her fingers had been busy with the slender, willow branches. "And now"--she said, abruptly changing the subject, and smiling as she spoke--"and now, you must turn back to your work."
"But the light is not right," he protested.
"Never mind, you must pretend that it is," she retorted. "Can't you pretend?"
"You may look, now," she said, a minute later.
He turned to see her standing close beside him, holding out a charming little basket that she had woven of the green willows and decorated with moss and watercress. In the basket, on the cool, damp moss, and lightly covered with the cress, lay a half dozen fine rainbow trout.
"How pretty!" he exclaimed. "So that is what you have been doing!"
She nodded brightly; "For you and Mr. Lagrange. I know you like them because you said you were fishing when you heard my violin. And I thought that you wouldn't want to leave your picture, to fish for yourself, so I took them for you."
The artist concealed his embarrassment with difficulty; and, while expressing his thanks and appreciation in rather formal words, studied her face keenly. But she had tendered her gift with a spontaneous naturalness, an unaffected kindliness, and an innocent disregard of conventionalities, that would have disarmed a man with much less native gentleness than Aaron King.
Leaving the basket of trout in his hand, she turned, and swung the empty creel over her shoulder. Then, putting on her hat, she picked up her rod.
"You have finished your work for to-day," she answered
She shook her head. "No, I don't want you."
"Perhaps--if you won't stop work--but I can't promise--you see I never know what I am going to do up here in the mountains," she answered whimsically. "I might go to the top of old 'Berdo' in the morning; or I might be here, waiting for you, when you come to paint."