"Well, you remember it is a child standing in a beautiful part of the woods. It is spring-time, as it seems best it should be when you are painting a child in the woods. I tried to make the picture breathe spring, and you know one of the writers said that the delicious thing about it was the way you got the smell of the woods;--that pleased me. Behind the child, visible in the picture, but invisible to the child, is a waterfall. The most vital thing in the universe to me was to have that waterfall make a sound. I think it does, or the picture wouldn't mean anything at all. And then of course the heart of the picture is in the child's face--the puzzled surprise, the glad wonder, and then deeper than that the response to something which cannot be understood. It might have been called 'Wondering,' or even 'Mystery,' but I liked the simpler title better. And I like that idea of painting, not just nature, but what nature means to man. I want to get at the response--the thing awakened--the things given back. Don't you see how that translates the spirit there is between nature and man--stands for the oneness?" He nodded, seeming to be thinking. "I see," he said at last. "I wonder if you know all that means?" "Why, yes, I think I do. My next picture will get at it in a--um--a more mature way." "Tell me about it." "I don't know that I can, very well. It's hard to put pictures into words. I fear it will sound very conventional as I tell it, but of course it is what one puts into it that makes for individuality. It is in the woods, too. You know, Karl, how I love the woods. And I _know_ them! It is not spring now, but middle summer; no suggestion of fall, but mature summer. A girl--just about such a girl as I was before you came that day and changed everything--had gone into the woods with a couple of books. She had been sitting under a tree, reading. But in the picture she is standing up very straight, leaning against the tree, the books overturned and forgotten at her feet--drawn into the bigger book--see? It is not that she has consciously yielded herself. It is not that she is consciously doing anything. She is listening--oh how she listens and longs! For what, none of us know--she least of all. Perhaps to the far off call of life and love speaking through the tender spirit of the woods. Oh how I love that girl!--and believe in her--and hope for her. In her eyes are the dreams of centuries. And don't you see that it is the same idea--the oneness--the openness of nature to the soul open to it?" "And you are going to make the woods very beautiful?" he asked, after a little thought. "More than just the beauty of trees and grass and colour?" "Yes, the beauty that calls to one. "Then," he said this a little timidly--"might it not be striking to have your girl, not really seeing it with the eyes at all? Have her eyes--closed, perhaps, but she feeling it, knowing it, in the higher sense really seeing it, just the same?"