His pause at the gate was only a momentary one; he turned toward the region of commerce and hotels and walked quickly away, the intervening foliage of the trees almost immediately cutting him off from the observation of the girl at the window. Then she heard her mother coming up the stairs and through the upper hall; whereupon Muriel, still tremulous, began hastily to alter the position of the little silver implements upon her dressing-table, thus sketching a preoccupation with small housewifery, if Mrs. Eliot should come into the room. But to the daughter’s acute disappointment, the mother passed the open door without even looking in, and retired to her own apartment. Muriel most urgently wished to follow her and shower her with questions: “Who _is_ he? Isn’t he a painter? Why did he come to see you? What were you talking about? When is he coming again? What did he say when he saw me?” But remembering the terms upon which she and her mother had so recently parted, and that odious word “inconsistent,” Muriel could not bend to the intimacy of such a questioning. In fact, her own thought took the form, “I’d rather die!” She turned to the window again, looked out at that gate so lately made significant by the passage of the stranger—and there was young Mr. Renfrew Mears, just coming in. He was a neat picture of a summer young gentleman for any girl’s eye; but to Muriel he was a too-familiar object, and just now about as interesting as a cup of tepid barley-water. She tried to move away before he saw her, but Renfrew had always a fatal quickness for seeing her. He called to her. “Oh, Muriel!” “Well—what?” she said reluctantly. “There’s something I want to ask you about. Will you come down a few minutes?” “Oh, well—I suppose so,” was her not too heartening response; but on the way downstairs a thought brightened her. Perhaps Renfrew might know something about a dark young man—a painter—lately come to town. He was blank upon this subject, however, as she discovered when they had seated themselves upon a wicker settee on the veranda. “No,” he said. “I haven’t heard of any artist that’s come here lately. Where’d you hear about one?” “Oh, around,” she said casually. “I’m not absolutely certain he’s an artist, but I got that idea somewhere. The reason I wanted to know is because I thought he might be one of the new group that have broken away, like Matisse and Gaugin.” “Who?” “Never mind. Haven’t you heard of anybody at _all_ that’s a stranger here—visiting somebody, perhaps?” “Not exactly,” Renfrew replied, thinking it over conscientiously. “I don’t believe I have, exactly.” “What do you mean, you don’t think you have ‘exactly’?” she asked irritably. “Have you, or haven’t you?” “Well,” he said, “my Aunt Milly from Burnetsville is visiting my cousins, the Thomases, but she’s an invalid and you probably wouldn’t——” “No, I wouldn’t!” Muriel said. “Don’t strain your mind any more, Renfrew.”