Audrey

In her lonely life, with the beauty of the earth about her to teach her

that there might be greater beauty that she yet might see with a daily

round of toil and sharp words to push her to that escape which lay in a

world of dreams, she had entered that world, and thrived therein. It was a

world that was as pure as a pearl, and more fantastic than an Arabian

tale. She knew that when she died she could take nothing out of life with

her to heaven. But with this other world it was different, and all that

she had or dreamed of that was fair she carried through its portals. This

house was there. Long closed, walled in, guarded by tall trees, seen at

far intervals and from a distance, as through a glass darkly, it had

become to her an enchanted spot, about which played her quick fancy, but

where her feet might never stray.

But now the spell which had held the place in slumber was snapped, and her

feet was set in its pleasant paths. She moved down the alley between the

lines of box, and the greyhound went with her. The branches of a

walnut-tree drooped heavily across the way; when she had passed them she

saw the house, square, dull red, bathed in sunshine. A moment, and the

walk led her between squat pillars of living green into the garden out of

the fairy tale.

Dim, fragrant, and old time; walled in; here sunshiny spaces, there cool

shadows of fruit-trees; broken by circles and squares of box; green with

the grass and the leaves, red and purple and gold and white with the

flowers; with birds singing, with the great silver river murmuring by

without the wall at the foot of the terrace, with the voice of a man who

sat beneath a cherry-tree reading aloud to himself,--such was the garden

that she came upon, a young girl, and heavy at heart.

She was so near that she could hear the words of the reader, and she knew

the piece that he was reading; for you must remember that she was not

untaught, and that Darden had books.

"'When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,

And swelling organs lift the rising soul,

One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,

Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight'"-The greyhound ran from Audrey to the man who was reading these verses

with taste and expression, and also with a smile half sad and half

cynical. He glanced from his page, saw the girl where she stood against

the dark pillar of the box, tossed aside the book, and went to her down

the grassy path between rows of nodding tulips. "Why, child!" he said.

"Did you come up like a flower? I am glad to see you in my garden, little

maid. Are there Indians without?"