“Do you know, Anne, Prescott’s in danger of losing his diploma, I’m afraid, all on account of Joan? I never see him any more. He’s here in New York or at Holly every other day or so. And even his new novel has gone on the rocks. He hasn’t done a stroke for weeks. Perhaps he’s jealous of Hugh, and that’s why he’s made such a point of spreading this story about ‘Noon’ and Hugh, since the papers all came out with the exhibition stuff. Shouldn’t wonder if the press will get hold of it any minute now! Wouldn’t that be just silly!” Brother and sister looked very much alike at the moment, absorbed in their individual angers, hands behind their backs, gazing up unseeingly at the radiant world in the frame before them. But the next minute Anne laughed, not without genuine sweetness, and murmured, “Glenn! Take a glance at Ariel. And forget Joan.” Ariel was standing not far off, her face lifted toward a picture. But she seemed not so much a girl viewing a picture in an art gallery, as a girl who had come down to a beach of yellow sands and was standing looking out at a reef with spray fountaining against it,—who might, in a moment, throw herself down there in the sun, and dream. If she did, out of her body would rise her spirit and dance on the crystal air. Look! There was the spirit already dancing,—where the sun in the picture above threw a white haze across the rocks. Glenn sang, under his breath, “Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d The wild waves whist, Foot it featly here and there; And sweet sprites, the burthen bear.” And Anne whispered, “Where should this music be? i’ the air or the earth?” “Neither,” Glenn told her seriously. “In Gregory Clare’s painting and in Ariel’s very body.” Hugh was coming toward them down the gallery, intending to hurry them on to “The Shell,” which was his, and would soon be hung at Wild Acres. But he halted. He saw the way Glenn was looking at Ariel. He saw a tenderness and gravity in his brother’s expression that he had never caught there before. And he turned away. He did not want to see that expression on his brother’s face an instant longer. And less than anything now did he want to stand in front of that portrait of Ariel and hear what his brother might say about it. He wished, with his whole soul, that Glenn would never come to it, never in his whole life catch so much as a glimpse of it. Chapter XXV “Why, Glenn! I thought it was all arranged. That you had agreed to go as counselor. I didn’t know you were even looking for anything else.” “But, Mother! Decker will be better than me as counselor. And Adams seemed quite glad to get me. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up. I have written the camp head all about Decker, and the minute he lets me off I’m to wire Adams. I thought you’d be rather pleased.”