She splashed away at her sky with her biggest brush, sweeping across from left to right with a wash of cobalt, and then began to edge off the colour into ragged little clouds as the despised drawing-master had taught her. There was not a cloud in the hot blue sky this midsummer afternoon, and Daphne’s treatment was purely conventional. And now she began her landscape, and tried with multitudinous dabs of gray, and green, and blue, Indian red, and Italian pink, ochre, and umber, and lake, and sienna, to imitate the glory of a fertile valley basking in the sun. The colours were beginning to get into confusion. The foreground and the distance were all on one plane, and Daphne was on the point of flinging her block on the red sandy ground, and indulging in the luxury of a demon-dance upon her unsuccessful effort, when a voice behind her murmured quietly: ‘Give your background a wash of light gray, and fetch up your middle-distance with a little body colour.’ ‘Thanks awfully,’ replied Daphne without looking round, and without the faintest indication of surprise. Painters in the forest were almost as common as gadflies. They seemed indigenous to the soil. ‘Shall I make my pine-trunks umber or Venetian red?’ ‘Neither,’ answered the unseen adviser. ‘Those tall pine-stems are madder-brown, except where the shadows tint them with purple.’ ‘You are exceedingly kind,’ said Daphne, stifling a yawn, ‘but I don’t think I’ll go on with it. I am so obviously in a mess; I suppose nobody but a Turner ought to attempt such a valley as that.’ ‘Perhaps not. Linnell or Vicat Cole might be able to give a faint idea of it.’ ‘Linnell!’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I thought he painted nothing but wheat-fields, and that his only idea of Nature was a blaze of yellow.’ ‘Have you seen many of his pictures?’ ‘One. I was taken to the Academy last year.’ ‘Were you very pleased with what you saw?’ ‘Delighted—with the gowns and bonnets. It was a Saturday afternoon in the height of the season, and I plead guilty to seeing very little of the pictures. There were always people in the way, and the people were ever so much more interesting than the paintings.’ ‘What picture can compare with a well-made gown or the latest invention in bonnets?’ exclaimed the unknown with good-humoured irony. Daphne hacked the spoiled sheet off her block with a dainty little penknife, and looked at the daub longingly, wishing that the stranger would depart and leave her free to execute a _pas seul_ upon her abortive effort. But the stranger seemed to have no idea of departure. He had evidently settled himself behind her, on a camp-stool, or a rock, or some kind of seat; and he meant to stay.