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<offerings. None of this modernistic trend for him; there are other
ways of putting feeling on canvas. In one frame, a vase of roses
stood on a mahogany table, and the petal that had fallen on its shin-
ing surface made Dirk's hand tense as if to pick it up. This fellow
has real perception, Dirk thought and passed on to a series of land-
scapes that brought the English countryside to life before his eyes.
Inclines just a little to Van Gogh in his choice of color, but his scenes
smack of Constable and the English school, he judged. Warm meadows
against backgrounds of forests with deep, cool, green recesses greeted
Dirk's eyes. More roses smiled from a bower beside a little cottage
within one frame while vines guarded the secrets of a summer house
in the next. Just the thing I'd paint, if I could, Dirk mused. He
noticed a theme of secrecy running through the collection. The
shadows, the bower, the summer house, all spoke of something sweet
and something hidden, something too lovely and too personal to be
exposed to the prying eyes of the outside world. Here was the theme
again in this next one; lilacs covered the windows of a tiny white
cottage beside a yellow gravel path ...

Lilacs-cottage-Dirk's eyes sharpened to take in every detail of
the canvas. Yes, there was the stream running beside the narrow road-
bed across from the cottage and the grove of poplars beyond the
stream. The whole scene basked in the radiant aura of sunset. It
was his cottage-their cottage-where he had been wont to retreat to
let his carefully gathered thoughts and impressions arrange them-
selves into stories and novels, where he and Lisa had later escaped to
enjoy the beauty of early spring and of being alone together. It was
their cottage, theirs alone, as it had been ...

Dirk had not thought anyone was aware of its existence, but this-
this intruder knew, must have known it before ... and there it was
again, complete with every surrounding shrub, every blade of grass
in place. It was there to call him back. Even here he wasn't allowed
to forget.

She was there, too. Dirk felt it and knew it. She was in the
cottage just as she had been when they had spent their first weekend
there together, just as she had been the day he had taken a short walk
before dinner. She was there, and he had to see her. He had to go
back to the cottage.

Why not go back? A quick glance showed that he was alone in
the room. He turned back to gaze longingly at the small white struc-
ture. Lisa was calling him. Her soul was calling him from behind

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