You have been very happy in
catching the expression which I am learning to know so well."
"Your words have a fuller meaning than you think," replied the
artist, heartily. "I have indeed been very happy in my work. I
never enjoyed a morning more in my life."
"But I'm to go home without any picture," said Ida, trying to hide
her pleasure by assumed reproachfulness.
"There is no picture yet, for any one," he answered, "this is only
a sketch from which I shall try to make two pictures that will
suggest a scene particularly attractive to one of my calling, to
say the least."
As he placed the sketch in his book, the work he had been engaged
on that morning when Ida met him by the roadside, dropped out, and
she saw herself leaning on the baluster rail of the staircase, with
her hand half extended as a token of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Her cheeks flushed instantly, but she was able to remark quietly:
"I suppose that is the way you artists keep a memorandum of current
events."
He replied gravely, but with some answering color also: "Yes, Miss
Mayhew, when the current is deep and strong."
Van Berg felt himself happy in securing from Mr. Eltinge an invitation
to come again.
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