“But it isn’t that,” Clark objected; “it’s more like an old steel engraving——” “Oh, not with all that color,” said Lawrence North. “It is like an engraving on a gray, cloudy day,—but today, with the bright water and vivid sunshine, it’s like a——” “Speak it right out!” cried Ted Landon, irrepressibly, “like a picture postcard!” “It can’t help being like that,” Mrs Blackwood agreed, “for the postcards for sale in the office of the club are more like the reality than any picture an artist has ever made of the Headland House.” “Of course, photographs are truer than drawings,” North said, “and that card that shows the cliff in a storm comes pretty near being a work of art.” “The difficulty would be,” Clark observed, “to get any kind of a picture of that place that wouldn’t be a work of art. Why, the architect’s blueprints of that house would come a good deal nearer art than lots of watercolors I’ve seen in exhibitions. I’m keen on the place.” “Who isn’t?” growled Landon, for most of the Headlanders resented the faintest disparagement of their cherished masterpiece, a joint work of nature and man. The promontory was joined to the mainland by a mere narrow neck of rocky land, and from that point a rough road descended, over and between steep hills, reaching at last the tiny village and scattered settlement of Headland Harbor. Headland House itself was a modified type of old world architecture. Built of rough gray stone, equipped with a few towers and turrets, pierced by deep and narrow windows, it had some effects of a French chateau and others that suggested an old English castle. It was true to no school, it followed no definite type, yet perched on its lonely height, sharply outlined against the sky, its majestic rock foundations sweeping away from beneath it, it showed the grandeur and sublimity of a well-planned monument. And, partly because of their real admiration, partly because of a spirit of ownership, the artist colony loved and cherished their Headland House with a jealous sensitiveness to criticism. “Stunning thing,—from here,” John Clark said, after a few moments of further smoking and gazing; “all the same, as I stated, I shouldn’t care to live up there.” “Too difficult of access,” Claire Blackwood said, “but, otherwise all right.” Mrs Blackwood was a widow, young, attractive, and of a psychic turn of mind. Not enough of an occultist to make her a bore, but possessing quick and sure intuitions and claiming some slight clairvoyant powers. She dabbled in water colors, and did an occasional oil. She was long-limbed, with long fingers and long feet, and usually had a long scarf of some gauzy texture trailing about her. Of an evening or even on a dressy afternoon, she had a long panel or sash-end hanging below her short skirt, and which was frequently trodden on by blundering, inattentive feet.