know how exultant it
is to stand alone, above the forest of your fellows,--to lift up your
highest bough of feeling,--to meet the Northland's fiercest courser that
thinks to lay you low. Did you ever turn to see the expression with
which the last leap of wind is met, the peculiar suavity of the bowing
of the boughs, that says as plainly as ever did speaking leaves, '_You
have left me myself_'? You don't understand these things, you small
wind-flower, that have grown sheltered from all storms!"

"One would think not, Miss Axtell, but"--and I paused until she bade me
"Go on."

"Perhaps it is vanity,--I hope not,--but it seems to me that I have a
mirror of all Nature set into the frame of my soul. It isn't a part of
myself; it is a mental telescope, that resolves the actions of all the
people around me into myriads of motives, atomies of inducement, that I
see woven and webbed around them, by the sight-power given. Besides, I
am not an anemone,--oh, no! I am something more substantial."

"I see, very"; and before I could divine her intent, she had lifted up
my face in both her hands and held my eyes in her own intensity of gaze,
as, oh, long ago! I remember my mother to have done, when she doubted my
perfect truth.

Miss Axtell was engaged in looking over old treasured letters, bits of
memory-memoranda, when I arrived. She had laid them aside to greet me,
somewhat hastily, and a rustling commotion testified their feeling at
their summary disposal. Now she sat framed in by the yellow-and-white
foam, that had settled to motionlessness,--an island in the midst of
waves of memory.

"Did you bring my treasures?" were the first words, after investigating
my truth.

"They are safely here."

I gave the package.

She made no mention of former occurrences. She trusted me implicitly,
with that far-deep of confidence that says, "Explanation would be
useless; your spirit recognizes mine." She only said, drooping her regal
head with the slightest dip into motion,--

"I want to tell you a story; it is of people who are, some in heaven and
some upon the earth;--a story with which you must have something to do
for me, because I cannot do it for myself. I did not intend telling so
soon, but my disbanded rainbow lies in the future."

Before commencing, she wandered up and down the room a little, stopped
before the dressing-bureau, brushed back the hair, with many repetitions
of stroke, from the temples wherein so much of worshi