“I’m sure of one thing,” said Mrs. Richmond tartly. “In my day children did not insult their parents.” “Now, don’t get cross at my joking, dear,” cajoled the daughter, kissing her mother’s well-arranged, gray hair so lightly that there could be no danger of disarranging it. As if it had all suddenly come over her again Mrs. Richmond cried despairingly, “What _will_ your father say! He’ll blame me. He’ll say things that will prostrate me.” “If you’ll not mention it to him,” said Beatrice, “I’ll guarantee that he’ll not blame you. Hank is going away in the morning. You and Hector can pretend to know nothing. I’ll take it up with him.” Her mother looked somewhat reassured, but said dubiously, “He’ll give it to me for not having guarded you more closely.” “I’ll fix all that,” said Beatrice with infectious confidence. “Trust me.” Mrs. Richmond gave her a look of gratitude so deep that it was almost loving. “If you’d only be sensible and put this foolishness out of your mind,” she said plaintively. Rix laughed gayly, then softly. “It isn’t in my mind,” said she. “It’s in another place--one I didn’t know about until I met him.” She looked at herself admiringly in a long mirror that happened to be at hand. “Don’t you see how much better looking I’ve grown of late? You understand why. Oh, I’m so happy!” Her mother gave a sigh of helplessness. Rix laughed again and went away to her own rooms--to try to write poetry! VI THE GUILE OF INNOCENCE The following morning it was not yet half past six and Chang had just reached the lake when her canoe shot round the bend. He stood a few yards from the water’s edge, observing her graceful maneuverings. She controlled that canoe as perfectly as if it had been part of her own body. He was too much the artist to be able to keep a stern countenance in face of so enchanting a spectacle. Also, her features--her yellow hair, the ever-changing, gray eyes, the mobile and rosy mouth, the delicate skin--had too much of the soft and dazzling loveliness of the morning. “If a man wished to let himself be bewitched,” thought he, “there would be an ideal enchantress.” She was one of the few women he had known who had worn well--about the only one, indeed. When he first knew her he had not thought that she was especially attractive, beyond the freshness that is the almost universal birthright of youth. But as he had studied her, as he had observed and felt her varied moods, her charm had grown. Even things about her, in themselves unattractive, were fascinating in the glow and throb of her naturally vivid personality--not an intellectual personality, not at all, but redolent of the fresh fragrance of the primal, the natural. “An ideal enchantress,” he muttered, and the lot he had sternly marked out for himself seemed bare and lonely, like a monk’s cell beside the glories of the landscape beyond its narrow window.