on her side, sleepily contemplating the whole scene
between her thick, bosky lashes. She liked everything but the
winged woman holding the hour-glass. Had she been that woman, she
would have dropped the hour-glass into the blue, burying water, and
have reached up her hand for the young man to draw her into the
boat with him. And she would have taken off her wings and cast
them away upon the hurrying river. To have been alone with him, no
hour-glass, no wings, rowing away on Life's long voyage, past
castles and valleys, and never ending woods and streams! As to the
Celestial City, she would have liked her blinds better if the rains
of her grandmother's youth had washed it away altogether. It was
not the desirable end of such a journey: she did not care to land
_there_.

Marguerite slipped drowsily over to the edge of the bed in order to
be nearer the blinds; and she began to study what was left of the
face of the young man just starting on his adventures from the
house of his fathers. Who was he? Of whom did he cause her to
think? She sat up in bed and propped her face in the palms of her
hands--the April face with its October eyes--and lapsed into what
had been her dreams of the night. The laces of her nightgown
dropped from her wrists to her elbows; the masses of her hair, like
sunlit autumn maize, fell down over her neck and shoulders into the
purity of the bed.

Until the evening of her party the world had been to Marguerite
something that arranged all her happiness and never interfered
with it. Only soundness and loveliness of nature, inborn,
undestroyable, could have withstood such luxury, indulgence,
surfeit as she had always known.

On that night which was designed to end for her the life of
childhood, she had, for the first time, beheld the symbol of the
world's diviner beauty--a cross. All her guests had individually
greeted her as though each were happier in her happiness. Except
one--he did not care. He had spoken to her upon entering with the
manner of one who wished himself elsewhere, he alone brought no
tribute to her of any kind, in his eyes, by his smile, through the
pressure of his hand.

The slight wounded her at the moment; she had not expected to have
a guest to whom she would be nothing and to whom it would seem no
unkindness to let her know this. The slight left its trail of pain
as the evening wore on and he did not come near her. Several
times, while standing close to him,