"Oh, no,--not now that we've started for the forest! Its feelings would be hurt if we turned back. I am sure it loves us to love it, although it is so big--Like God, you know." "Yes: I'm sure it does. Do you really think God cares?" "Of course," said Betty, "because everything would be so silly if He didn't, you know. I believe He likes us to love him, and what's more, I believe He likes us to love all the pretty things He's made--trees and rivers and sunsets and seas." "And each other," said Temple, and flushed to the ears: "human beings, I mean, of course," he added hastily. "Of course," said Betty, unconscious of the flush; "but religion tells you that--it doesn't tell you about the little things. It does say about herbs of the field and the floods clapping their hands and all that--but that's only His works praising Him, not us loving all His works. I think He's most awfully pleased when we love some little, nice, tiny thing that He never thought we'd notice." "Did your father teach you to think like this?" "Oh, dear no!" said Betty. "He doesn't like the little pretty things." "It's odd," said Temple. "Look at those yellow roses all over that hideous villa." "My step-father would only see the villa. Well, must we work to-day?" "What would you like to do?" "I should like to go to those big rocks--the Rochers des Demoiselles, aren't they?--and tie up the pony, and climb up, and sit in a black shadow and look out over the green tops of the trees. You see things when you're idle that you never see when you're working, even if you're trying to paint those very things." So, by and by, the gray pony was unharnessed and tied to a tree in a cool, grassy place where he also could be happy, and the two others took the winding stony path. A turn in the smooth-worn way brought them to a platform overhanging the precipice that fell a sheer thirty feet to the tops of the trees on the slope below. White, silvery sand carpeted the ledge, and on the sand the shadow of a leaning rock fell blue. "Here" said Betty, and sank down. Her sketchbook scooped the sand with its cover. "Oh, I _am_ hot!" She threw off her hat. "You don't look it," said Temple, and pulled the big bottle of weak claret and water from the luncheon basket. "Drink!" he said, offering the little glass when he had filled it. Betty drank, in little sips. "How extraordinarily nice it is to drink when you're thirsty," she said, "and how heavenly this shadow is." A long silence. Temple filled and lighted a pipe. From a slope of dry grass a little below them came the dusty rattle of grasshoppers' talk. "It is very good here," said Betty. "Oh, how glad I am I came away from Paris. Everything looks different here--I mean the things that look as if they mattered there don't matter here--and the things that didn't matter there--oh, here, they do!"