"A sort of picture," replied Kenset quickly, "a picture woven in cloth. But first, if you'll be so kind, I want you to break bread with me. You said we would not be friends. I'm not so sure of that. There is nothing like a man's bread and salt for the refutation of logic." He slipped off the desk with a lithe rippling of his body, but Tharon was first on her feet. "You mean stay to supper?" she asked decisively. "No, I can't do that. I took back a meal from you. That stan's between." "Why, you funny girl," said Kenset, "nothing stands between. And I don't mean supper, exactly, either. Please sit down." Tharon stood, considering. She turned the matter over in her mind. She had taken this man's house by storm. It had, indeed, given her refuge. If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wondered where she would be now--driven deep into Black Coulee, she made no doubt, a prisoner to Courtrey. "All right," she said abruptly, "I'll stay. But you must be quick. Th' time is goin' fast." Kenset went swiftly across the cabin to that part which served as kitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shiny nickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharon on the table. He struck a match and presently a clean blue flame grew up beneath it. He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, with water from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the big trunks against the farther wall and brought out a little tin of cakes, such as one could buy in any city of the world. All this was absorbing to the girl in the big chair, who watched with grave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all the time. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of the strain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mind the knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potential murderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From a pan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as a woman, and presently he spread between them on the table a small repast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness. He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her no consciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the big room of the Holding for all the flutter there was in her. He told her somewhat of himself, of his life in the East, but he was careful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of the circumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passed as if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharon rose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his home of any Lost Valley denizen. "Bring out your picture," she said decisively, "I'll help you hang it, an' then I must go home."