“The damp is so very penetrating, even in summer,” she murmured when they came obediently. She was half surprised at her open audacity, half repentant. They came so meekly at her call. “And my husband is sensitive to fever from the East. No, <I<PLEASEdo not throw away your cigars. We can sit by the open window and enjoy the evening while you smoke.”

She was very talkative for a moment; subconscious excitement was the cause.

“It is so still—so wonderfully still,” she went on, as no one spoke; “so peaceful, and the air so very sweet … and God is always near to those who need His aid.” The words slipped out before she realised quite what she wa saying, yet fortunately, in time to lower her voice, for no one heard them. They were, perhaps, an instinctive expression of relief. It flustered her that she could have said the thing at all.

Sanderson brought her shawl and helped to arrange the chairs; she thanked him in her old-fashioned, gentle way, declining the lamps which he had offered to light. “They attract the moths and insects so, I think!”

The three of them sat there in the gloaming. Mr. Bittacy’s white moustache and his wife’s yellow shawl gleaming at either end of the little horseshoe, Sanderson with his wild black hair and shining eyes midway between them. The painter went on talking softly, continuing evidently the conversation begun with his host beneath the cedar. Mrs. Bittacy, on her4 guard, listened—uneasily.

“For trees, you see, rather conceal themselves in daylight. They reveal themselves fully only after sunset. I never know a tree,” he bowed here slightly towards the lady as though to apologise for something he felt she would not quite understand or like, “until I’ve seen it in the night. Your cedar, for instance,” looking towards her husband again so that Mrs. Bittacy caught the gleaming of his turned eyes, “I failed with badly at first, because I did it in the morning. You shall see to-morrow what I mean—that first sketch is upstairs in my portfolio; it’s quite another tree to the one you bought. That view”—he leaned forward, lowering his voice—”I caught one morning about two o’clock in very faint moonlight and the stars. I saw the naked being of the thing–-”

“You mean that you went out, Mr. Sanderson, at that hour?” the old lady asked with astonishment and mild rebuke. She did not care particularly for his choice of adjectives either.

“I fear it was rather a liberty to take in another’s house, perhaps,” he answered courteously. “But, having chanced to wake, I saw the tree from my window, and made my way downstairs.”

“It’s a wonder Boxer didn’t bit you; he sleeps loose in the hall,” she said.

“On the contrary. The dog came out with me.