The Call of the Cumberlands

"You look," said Adrienne, studying his countenance in the pallor of

the moonlight, "as though you were seeing ghosts."

"I am," said Samson. "Let's go."

Adrienne had not yet seen her portrait. Samson had needed a few hours

of finishing when he left New York, though it was work which could be

done away from the model. So, it was natural that, when the party

reached Paris, Adrienne should soon insist on crossing the Pont d'

Alexandre III. to his studio near the "Boule Mich'" for an

inspection of her commissioned canvas. For a while, she wandered about

the business-like place, littered with the gear of the painter's craft.

It was, in a way, a form of mind-reading, for Samson's brush was the

tongue of his soul.

The girl's eyes grew thoughtful, as she saw that he still drew the

leering, saturnine face of Jim Asberry. He had not outgrown hate, then?

But she said nothing, until he brought out and set on an easel her own

portrait. For a moment, she gasped with sheer delight for the colorful

mastery of the technique, and she would have been hard to please had she

not been delighted with the conception of herself mirrored in the

canvas. It was a face through which the soul showed, and the soul was

strong and flawless. The girl's personality radiated from the canvas

--and yet--A disappointed little look crossed and clouded her eyes. She

was conscious of an indefinable catch of pain at her heart.

Samson stepped forward, and his waiting eyes, too, were disappointed.

"You don't like it, Drennie?" he anxiously questioned. But she smiled

in answer, and declared: "I love it."

He went out a few minutes later to telephone for her to Mrs. Lescott,

and gave Adrienne carte blanche to browse among his portfolios

and stacked canvases until his return. In a few minutes, she discovered

one of those efforts which she called his "rebellious pictures."

These were such things as he painted, using no model except memory

perhaps, not for the making of finished pictures, but merely to give

outlet to his feelings; an outlet which some men might have found in

talk.

This particular canvas was roughly blocked in, and it was elementally

simple, but each brush stroke had been thrown against the surface with

the concentrated fire and energy of a blow, except the strokes that had

painted the face, and there the brush had seemed to kiss the canvas.

The picture showed a barefooted girl, standing, in barbaric simplicity

of dress, in the glare of the arena, while a gaunt lion crouched eying

her. Her head was lifted as though she were listening to faraway music.

In the eyes was indomitable courage. That canvas was at once a

declaration of love, and a miserere. Adrienne set it up beside

her own portrait, and, as she studied the two with her chin resting on

her gloved hand, her eyes cleared of questioning. Now, she knew what

she missed in her own more beautiful likeness. It had been painted with

all the admiration of the mind. This other had been dashed off straight

from the heart--and this other was Sally! She replaced the sketch where

she had found it, and Samson, returning, found her busy with little

sketches of the Seine.