open sky with scarcely a hint of cloud. Across the bottom she
outlined a bit of Sunland Desert she well remembered, in the
foreground a bed of flat-leaved nopal, flowering red and yellow,
the dark red prickly pears, edible, being a near relative of the
fruits she had used in her salad. After giving the prickly pear
the place of honor to the left, in higher growth she worked in
the slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of the Cholla, shading
the flowers a paler, greenish yellow. On the right, balancing
the Cholla, she drew the oval, cylindrical columns of the
hedgehog cactus, and the color touch of the big magenta flowers
blended exquisitely with the color she already had used. At the
left, the length of her page, she drew a gigantic specimen of
Opuntia Tuna, covered with flowers, and well-developed specimens
of the pears whose coloring ran into the shades of the hedgehog
cactus.

She was putting away her working materials when she heard steps
and voices on the stairs, so she knew that Eileen and John Gilman
were coming. She did not in the least want them, yet she could
think of no excuse for refusing them admission that would not
seem ungracious. She hurried to the wall, snatched down the
paintings for Peter Morrison, and looked around to see how she
could dispose of them. She ended by laying one of them in a
large drawer which she pushed shut and locked. The other she
placed inside a case in the wall which formerly had been used for
billiard cues. At their second tap she opened the door. Eileen
was not at her best. There was a worried look across her eyes, a
restlessness visible in her movements, but Gilman was radiant.

"What do you think, Linda?" he cried. "Eileen has just named the