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“No, but she has on YOU. I can’t say,” continued Mr. Bowers, with sublime naivete, “that I’d ever recognize you from her description, but a woman o’ that kind don’t see with her eyes like you and me, but with all her senses to onct, and a heap more that ain’t senses as we know ’em. The same eyes that seed down through the brush and ferns in the Summit woods, the same ears that heerd the music of the wind trailin’ through the pines, don’t see you with my eyes or hear you with my ears. And when she paints you, it’s nat’ril for a woman with that pow’ful mind and grand idees to dip her brush into her heart’s blood for warmth and color. Yer smilin’, young man. Well, go on and smile at me, my lad, but not at her. For you don’t know her. When you know her story as I do, when you know she was made a wife afore she ever knew what it was to be a young woman, when you know that the man she married never understood the kind o’ critter he was tied to no more than ef he’d been a steer yoked to a Morgan colt, when ye know she had children growin’ up around her afore she had given over bein’ a sort of child herself, when ye know she worked and slaved for that man and those children about the house–her heart, her soul, and all her pow’ful mind bein’ all the time in the woods along with the flickering leaves and the shadders,–when ye mind she couldn’t get the small ways o’ the ranch because she had the big ways o’ Natur’ that made it,–then you’ll understand her.”

Impressed by the sincerity of his visitor’s manner, touched by the unexpected poetry of his appeal, and yet keenly alive to the absurdity of an incomprehensible blunder somewhere committed, the editor gasped almost hysterically,–

“But why should all this make her in love with ME?”

“Because ye are both gifted,” returned Mr. Bowers, with sad but unconquerable conviction; “because ye’re both, so to speak, in a line o’ idees and business that draws ye together,–to lean on each other and trust each other ez pardners. Not that YE are ezakly her ekal,” he went on, with a return to his previous exasperating naivete, “though I’ve heerd promisin’ things of ye, and ye’re still young, but in matters o’ this kind there is allers one ez hez to be looked up to by the other,–and gin’rally the wrong one. She looks up to you, Mr. Editor,–it’s part of her po’try,–ez she looks down inter the brush and sees more than is plain to you and me. Not,” he continued, with a courteously deprecating wave of the hand, “ez you hain’t bin kind to her–mebbe TOO kind. For thar’s the purty letter you writ her, thar’s the perlite, easy, captivatin’ way you had with her gals and that boy–hold on!”–as the editor made a gesture of despairing renunciation,–“I ain’t sayin’ you ain’t right in keepin’ it to yourself,–and thar’s the extry money you sent her every time. Stop! she knows it was EXTRY, for she made a p’int o’ gettin’ me to find out the market price o’ po’try in papers and magazines, and she reckons you’ve bin payin’ her four hundred per cent. above them figgers–hold on! I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t free and liberal in you, and I’d have done the same thing; yet SHE thinks”–

But the editor had risen hastily to his feet with flushing cheeks.

“One moment, Mr. Bowers,” he said, hurriedly. “This is the most dreadful blunder of all. The gift is not mine. It was the spontaneous offering of another who really admired our friend’s work,–a gentleman who”–He stopped suddenly.

The sound of a familiar voice, lightly humming, was borne along the passage; the light tread of a familiar foot was approaching. The editor turned quickly towards the open door,–so quickly that Mr. Bowers was fain to turn also.