The Key to Yesterday

via driveway and turnpike, but a path, linking the houses, reduced it to a quarter of a mile. This "air line," as Steele dubbed it, led from the hill where the cabin perch

hs should be. To the gracious household at Horton House, they were "the boys." Steele had been on life

the turnpike, and the picturesque little village of brick and stone at its back had been the "quarters" for the slaves. It would no more do to rechristen it than to banish the ripened old family portraits, or replace

een only names to him and that richness of congenial companionship which differentiates life from existence. While he felt the wine-like warmth of it in his heart, he felt its seductiveness in his brain. The thought of its ep

s Filson came over to inspect the quarters and to see

rcoal sketches and studio paraphernalia that littered its walls and floor. Saxon had hung his canvases in galleries where the juries were accounted sternly critical; he had hear

specting the premises from living-room to pantry, with

d them in a favorable light, he found one at whose vivid glow and maste

cathedral, partly vine-covered, reared its yellowed walls and towers into a hot sky. The sun beat

slender fingers. For a time, she did not speak, but the man read her d

ove

w picture, he felt as though

" she said thoughtfully, "that Se?

e shed by her praise. His back was turned

y heard him

of South America.

criticized, Saxon led the gi

e directness, "when I know you just a l

"Do it now-then, I sha'n't have it impe

her eyes clouding with do

than I do about the subject of this lecture-only," she added with convicti

e mercy of the court." He made the decl

u to plead guilty. I

e reform required, Saxon rem

be anybody's disciple. I don't know a great deal about art, but I've stood before Marston's pictures in the galleries abro

his fingers. His silence might almost have be

leaning forward eagerly, her eyes dee

ment, then halted before her. When he spoke, i

he said nothing, but shook her head with a dissenting smile, which carried up the corners of her lips

have done in stumbling after him. If I ever attain his perfection, I shall still be as you say only the copyis

A shaft of sun struck the delicate color of her cheeks, and discovered coppery glints in her brown hair. She was very slim and wonderful, Saxon tho

ow wonderfully he paints. He is a poet with a brush for a pen

s brows in challe

virility." She was talking more rapidly as her enthusiasm gathered headway. "A man's pictures a

o know that she believed his canvases reflect

orld because you couldn't face the music of your own fame? That's not modesty-it's insanity. When I was in Paris, everybody wa

I stood before his 'Winter Sunset.' You know the picture?" She nodded assent. "Well, when I saw it, I wanted to go out to the Metropolitan entrance, and shout Eureka up and down Fifth Avenue. It told me what I'd been reaching through the

had halted before her, and now she arose impulsiv

ugh, but you-" she looked at him a moment with a warmth of confidence-"you can do a great deal more." So ended he

rdous territory of love. Then, as the cool, unperfumed beauty of the dogwood was forgotten for the sense-steeping fragrance of the locust, he knew that he was only trying to deceive himself. He had really crossed this forbidden frontier when he passed through the gate that separated the grandstand at Churchill Downs from the club-house inclosure. With the realization came the resolution of silence. He was

g him to the other extreme. And she, not understanding it, yet felt that there was some riddle behind it all. It pained and puzzled her, but she accepted it without resentment-

onchos in the event of rain. For this occasion, she had saved a coign of vantage she knew, where his artist's eye might swing out from a shelving cliff over miles of checkered valley and flat, and league upon league of cloud and sky. She led the way by zigzag hill roads where they caught stinging blows from back-lashing branches and up steep, slippery acclivities. It was one of the times when Saxon was drinking the pleasant nectar of to-day, refusing to think of to-m

s, her eyes gazing unblinkingly and thoughtfully up to the fleece that drifted across the blue of the sky. Clover heads waved fragrantly about her, and one long-stemmed blossom brushed

e verdict?"

eyes. Her voice was low and t

you never caught before; something wonderfu

le toward her. His face was the face of a man whose

superfluous for him to have added, "Love." He drew back almost with a start, and began to scrape the pai

elf trembling; then, taking refuge in childlike in

en lived through, "there is the most wonderfulest flower!" He

wered with a composure too calm to be genuine

of reach. The edelweiss grows only among the glaciers, and th

demonstrate his regained command of himself. A delicate purple flower hung on

upport of a jutting root, then slipped quietly over, resting by h

rd and seized both his elbows. Her fingers clutched hi

ou doing?"

something else. It might have been the reflection of what she had a few moments before read in his own. He could feel the soft play of her breath on

see," he added with an irrelevant whimsicality, "I

h ominous quietness of vo

to the ledge. "I'm no

become almost drawn. He was conscious of having been too close to the edge in more ways than one, and with the consciousness came the old sense of necessity f

ke first. She laughe

artist, you are really v

ice wa

than that,"

e was awkward silence;

going to pai

the canvas moodil

y; "if I were to touch i

f-turned away from him, and he

wester" shining like metal under the slanting lines of rain, went on ahead. In her man's saddle, she sat almost rigidly erect, and the gauntleted hand that held the reins of the heavy cavalry bridle clutched them

her sword hilt, the spu

er harness of gray

shed charger, beauti

battle, the Young Que

, until she turned her face and spoke with something ne

did you say?" And sh