"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "_noli me tangere!_" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep contentment: "Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray void without the gods." And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard wood--worthlessly young as yet but beautiful. From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers--they of the solid crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris and pink azalea. "How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance. "It's stopped." "_A cause de_--?" "_Je n'en sais rien, Valerie_." She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance. "Has not your desire to paint returned?" "No." "Do you know why?" "Partly. I am up against a solid wall. There is no thoroughfare." "Make one." "Through the wall?" "Straight through it." "Ah, yes"--he murmured--"but what lies beyond?" "It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand." He turned to her: "You are good for me. Do you know it?" "Querida said that, too. He said that I was an experience; and that all good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly." "Do you like Querida?" he asked, curiously. "Sometimes." "Not always?" "Oh, yes, always more or less. But sometimes"--she was silent, her dark eyes dreaming, lips softly parted. "What do you mean by that?" he inquired, carelessly. "By what, Louis?" she asked, naïvely, interrupted in her day-dream. "By hinting--that sometimes you like Querida--more than at others?" "Why, I do," she said, frankly. "Besides, I don't hint things; I say them." She had turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in silence for a few moments. "You are funny about Querida," she said. "Don't you like him?" "I have no reason to dislike him." "Oh! Is it the case of Sabidius? '_Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare!_'" He laughed uneasily: "Oh, no, I think not.... You and he are such excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway." But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost expressionless.