She left him on the rustic seat, and hastened across the sward to pluck a bloom that had been sheltered from the early frost, and he looked at her, a gladness tingling in his nerves. How trim she was in her dark gown! She looked back at him, pointed at a policeman standing off among the trees, and imitated the walk of a sneak-thief. She returned laughing, and pinning the flower on his coat, stood to gaze upon him as if he were in bloom, and said in an accent that always reminded him of a banjo's lower tones, "See, the frost has not killed you." Simple, playful, loving, strong, were the words to express an estimate of her--the healthy refinement of an honest heart, and modest because she had seen immodesty. She possessed a knowledge that was a better safeguard than mere innocence, and her passion illumined her virtue. They strolled among the trees, society's forest; they listened co the ducks and the geese, the city's barnyard. "Would you rather live in the country?" he asked. "I would not rather teach art there," she laughed. "It must be very hard." "It is very stupid." "I don't suppose the farmers take to it any too kindly." "No, they often ask me why I do not draw comic as they see in the newspapers." "They must like to see themselves buying gold bricks." She did not understand him, and he explained that the honest farmer believing that a fortune was coming down the road to meet him, was the prey of sharp swindlers who prowled about through the country. Steve Hardy, one of the shrewdest men in the community, once had bought an express package filled with worthless paper. It was a case of "honesty" trying to beat the three-shell man at his own game. Ignorance always credits itself with shrewdness. Industry is no sure sign of honesty. "Worked like a thief" has become a saying. Smiling at his philosophy, she said that he never could have learned it in a school. "No," he replied. "In the school we are taught to believe in the true, the beautiful, and the good; but in life we find that the true as we learned it is often false, the beautiful painted, and the good bad." "I would not have you think that," she said. "The beautiful is not always painted." She stooped and picked up a maple leaf, blushed with the rudeness of the frost. "This is not painted, and it is beautiful. It was the cold that brought out its color. You must not be a--what would you call it?" "Cynic?" "Yes. You must not be that. It is an acknowledgment of failure."