He put down his crayon and sketch pad and said quietly. “It’s wrong. It doesn’t come the right way.”

“You mean I’m a bad sitter,” she said, falling into her joking way with him.

“I don’t mean anything of the sort,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with you.” He sat without saying more, frowning as he considered the problem. Seeing that he no longer looked at her, she relaxed.

They remained so for five minutes. His frown turned darker, harder, and more private; and then at last his eyes began to lighten, and his face muscles relaxed a little. He looked at her. “Will you do something—try something, I mean to say? It may not work either, but I have to listen to instinct when I’m not getting forward; and I’m not.”

“Of course,” she said. “The fault is mine, I venture. I’ve put you off so many times that whatever ideas you might have had are now dissipated.”

“I found a place—” He paused to correct himself. “I know a place. I found it during a walk when I was staying at Oaks. The tutor—Mr. Proctor?—a kind man, guided me to it one day and said no one went there except him, and he wouldn’t for a while, for he was busy with young—”

When he paused again, she said, “Adam.”

He nodded. “And I needn’t fear that either of the young ladies would go there, because Miss Annabel didn’t walk, and Miss Doreen walked only about the fields and barn yards with her grandmother and her brother James.”

She began to frown now, wondering where his thoughts led. Seeing her uncertainty, he smiled and shrugged. “It’s just a place. Wooded. Rocks and a little stream. But it has a feeling, and I can see you there.”

“It seems an elaborate procedure for us to go to Oaks. We have plenty of woods and a creek here. If you like—”

“No, no. We wouldn’t have to go to Oaks. I’ve learned the way from here. Last week when I was—waiting. I went walking and found it again. I’d like you to see it. That is all.”

She smiled. “I am not to pose in my brocaded gown then.”

“No. Come with me tomorrow. I may be wrong about it. But let us see what happens.”

15