The city tired him with its everlasting sounds of traffic. The tread of dray horses and the rumbling of carts sounded in his ears from earliest dawn till late night. There was no peace here amongst his fellow-men. He longed for the solitude of his tower, for his forest neighbors, for the sound of the woods, the wide arch of blue sky, seen now through one narrow slit between the opposing houses. One morning he determined to take a day of rest; and, after making a light breakfast at a coffee-house near by, he started for the San Rosario Ranch, with a lighter heart than he had carried in his bosom for many days. It was a bright morning; the air was crisped with a prediction of winter weather, genial enough in this region at its worst. As he passed through the familiar country he traced some likeness to Millicent Almsford in every object on which his eyes lighted. Now it was the golden-brown of her hair seen in the shiny coat of a sleek filly frolicking in a pasture; now it was her graceful movements traced in the trembling branches of a straight young sapling; again, her gray eyes smiled in his face from under the brows of a fair child playing by the roadside. The harsh voice of the wheels thundering over the steel rails seemed to be repeating her name; and his heart kept time with the refrain, beating out the syllables rhythmically,--Millicent, Millicent, Millicent! He was weary of reasoning with himself. For six days in the week his work was all-sufficing, and he needed no other companionship; but on the seventh day he longed for rest; he needed beauty, he needed love. He knew that it was weak in him to waver in his resolution not to see Millicent again; he knew that it was a wrong to her, and that he would bitterly regret it in after days. And yet he yielded to that exquisite golden haze which seemed to have dropped about him, flooding his life with a passionate delight, an ecstasy of expectation. He alighted at the station, and stood watching the receding train with strained eyes. He wished now that he had not come. He walked up and down the narrow platform, flushed and unnerved with the tumult in his breast. On his right lay the dusty carriage-road which led to the house; on his left a narrow bridle-path pierced the woods, over which he must pass to reach his tower. Which should it be,--a day passed with the creatures of the forest, under the blue sky and murmuring trees; or an hour of the soft delight which Millicent’s voice, Millicent’s eyes, Millicent’s lightest finger-touch, wrapped about him? He realized now how he had cheated himself. He had said that it was the wood-birds whose voices wooed him from the city! He knew now that beneath that longing for the free air of his forest home lay the deeper desire which had tempted him to leave his picture half finished, his palette half set.