Her only answer was to lay her aching head upon his breast, to twine her arms about him, and to sob out incoherent words of love and grief, all of which puzzled and wearied him. He soothed her tenderly; and when they parted there was a smile upon her lips, though her breast still trembled with the slow after-waves of a grief which shook her whole being. Graham, unnerved by the tempest which he had all unwittingly aroused, reached his tower in an excited and irritable frame of mind. The first thing that met his eyes was the picture of the lovers lying at the foot of the easel. He picked it up, placed it on the table before him, and long and critically surveyed his work. "I painted better than I knew," he sighed. "Yes, thus it is that we stand toward each other, man and woman, and ever shall stand,--the man looking out beyond, above, the woman, and she finding her utmost limit of self-projection in him. Alas and alas!" He placed the painting with its face toward the wall, and with a moody brow turned to his new sketch. "Bah, I can do nothing, see nothing in that picture; I have been too rudely summoned back to earth, to the little griefs of humanity, by a woman’s tears. I was never meant for it, I cannot bear it." So ran his thoughts impatiently. He had been living in the passionless perfection of art, and had been suddenly recalled by a little creature, full of small human feelings, to this narrow world. Nettled and unstrung, he threw himself upon his hard bed, to dream of Millicent,--a happy dream, in which she knelt before him, acknowledging her fault, pleading his forgiveness; a dream of sweet reconciliation, wherein was memory of that hour among the redwoods, of that mystic soul-embrace but once known to him his whole life through. He awoke refreshed and strengthened, with a love-song on his lips tender as that of the mourning dove. Sundown showed him again at his easel after a long day’s work; but that evening Millicent listened in vain for the patter of Tasso’s hoofs among the softly rustling autumn leaves. In the week which followed Graham did not venture to see Millicent again, fearing her disturbing influence on his work. He sent her every day by his faithful henchman some little memento. One morning it was a quick sketch of the sunset of the previous night. Another day it was a bunch of pretty brown quails, the result of an hour’s shooting. Once she found hung upon her window-ledge a garland of dewy red roses; and easily guessed what strong, light figure had swung itself up the piazza post, and over the trellis-work, to lay this offering before her curtained window.