Valancy had two wonderful moments that spring.

 

One day, coming home through the woods, with her arms full of trailing arbutus and creeping spruce, she met a man who she knew must be Allan Tierney. Allan Tierney, the celebrated¹ painter of beautiful women. He lived in New York in winter, but he owned an island cottage at the northern end of Mistawis to which he always came the minute the ice was out of the lake. He was reputed to be a lonely, eccentric man. He never flattered his sitters. There was no need to, for he would not paint any one who required flattery. To be painted by Allan Tierney was all the cachet of beauty a woman could desire. Valancy had heard so much about him that she couldn’t help turning her head back over her shoulder for another shy, curious look at him. A shaft² of pale spring sunlight fell through a great pine athwart her bare black head and her slanted³ eyes. She wore a pale green sweater and had bound a fillet of linnæa vine about her hair. The feathery fountain of trailing spruce overflowed⁴ her arms and fell around her. Allan Tierney’s eyes lighted up.

 

“I’ve had a caller,” said Barney the next afternoon, when Valancy had returned from another flower quest.

 

“Who?” Valancy was surprised but indifferent. She began filling a basket with arbutus.

 

“Allan Tierney. He wants to paint you, Moonlight.”

 

“Me!” Valancy dropped her basket and her arbutus. “You’re laughing at me, Barney.”

 

“I’m not. That’s what Tierney came for. To ask my permission to paint my wife—as the Spirit of Muskoka, or something like that.”

 

“But—but—” stammered⁵ Valancy, “Allan Tierney never paints any but—any but——”

 

“Beautiful women,” finished Barney. “Conceded. Q. E. D., Mistress Barney Snaith is a beautiful woman.”

 

“Nonsense,” said Valancy, stooping to

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