The artist concealed his embarrassment with difficulty; and, while expressing his thanks and appreciation in rather formal words, studied her face keenly. But she had tendered her gift with a spontaneous naturalness, an unaffected kindliness, and an innocent disregard of conventionalities, that would have disarmed a man with much less native gentleness than Aaron King. Leaving the basket of trout in his hand, she turned, and swung the empty creel over her shoulder. Then, putting on her hat, she picked up her rod. "Oh--are you going?" he said. "You have finished your work for to-day," she answered "But let me go with you, a little way." She shook her head. "No, I don't want you." "But you will come again?" "Perhaps--if you won't stop work--but I can't promise--you see I never know what I am going to do up here in the mountains," she answered whimsically. "I might go to the top of old 'Berdo' in the morning; or I might be here, waiting for you, when you come to paint." He was putting his things in the box--thinking he would persuade her to let him accompany her a little way; if she saw that he really would paint no more. When he bent over the box, she was speaking. "I hope you will," he answered. There was no reply. He straightened up and looked around. She was gone. For some time, he stood searching the glade with his eyes, carefully; listening to catch a sound--a puzzled, baffled look upon his face. Taking his things, at last, he started up the little path. But before he reached the old gate, a low laugh caused him to whirl quickly about. There she stood, beside the spring--a teasing smile on her face. Before he could command himself, she danced a step or two, with an elfish air, and slipped away through the green willow wall. Another merry laugh came back to him and then--the silence of the little glade, and the sound of the distant waters. With the basket of fish in his hand, Aaron King went slowly to camp; where, when Conrad Lagrange saw what the artist carried so carefully, explanations were in order. Chapter XVIII Sibyl Andrés and the Butterflies On the following day, the artist was putting away his things, at the close of the afternoon's work, when the girl appeared. The long, slanting bars of sunshine and the deepening shadows marked the lateness of the hour. As he bent over his paint-box, the man was thinking with regret that she would not come--that, perhaps, she would never come. And at the thought that he might not see her again, an odd fear gripped his heart. His thoughts were interrupted by a low, musical laugh; and he sprang to his feet, to search the glade with careful eyes. "Come out," he cried, as though adjuring an invisible spirit. "I know you are here; come out."