The painting was the one that Hugh’s intrusion on their beach had interrupted. It was a bit of a corner of the beach seen at high noon. Everything was sun-stilled, even the water, except for the figure of Ariel herself, who was dancing in the violet heat-glow above the rocks. But although it was Clare’s daughter, the artist had not seen her as human, since he placed her dancing feet on air, not earth. And the faded smock—the smock she was wearing the day Hugh had first come to the studio—in the painting had found its vanished color at the same time that the hot sunlight struck all color from her partly averted face. Gregory Clare might have called this painting “Ariel Dances,” but instead he called it “Noon.” And it was Noon, actually. Ariel was only the heart-pulse at the center of the otherwise still, white light. But one thousand dollars! The listening girl was stunned, strangely taken aback. Her father, however, did not show even surprise. He merely chuckled and jingled the coins in his pockets like music. “I congratulate you, Hugh,” he murmured, after a minute. “You show your taste. ‘Noon’ is my best, quite easily my best, so far. I’m awfully glad that you see it. I’ve felt all along, though, that you were seeing an awful lot, really. And to sacrifice one fourth of your year’s income to beauty won’t hurt you. Indeed, it might very well happen to save your soul. Even so, I advise you to take more time. Think it over. Write me. I can always ship you the thing. I won’t part with it for less than the thousand, though.” But the fledgling art connoisseur was not to be put off. Until now he had been in regard to the studio, the people in it, and the paintings, the soaring, silent hawk. This, however, was his instant of darting and seizing. He had carried ‘Noon’ off with him, under his arm, unwrapped, and made the boat without a second to lose. And amazingly soon thereafter Gregory Clare and his daughter had got themselves to Europe, which meant Paris; and once in Paris, Gregory swept Ariel straight to the Louvre, where she sat or promenaded with him as long as Hugh’s thousand dollars lasted, gazing on cold, dim old pictures, but with her father’s warm, vibrant artist’s hand often on hers. It had been Ariel’s one adventure beyond Bermuda, until this present adventure: alone, and her father dead.