VALENTINE'S EVE 282

XXIX. COLUMBINE AT DAWN 288

XXX. LUGETE, O VENERES 289

XXXI. A DOCUMENT IN MADNESS 298

XXXII. PAGEANTRY OF DEATH 303

XXXIII. LOOSE ENDS 310

XXXIV. MR. Z. TREWHELLA 317

XXXV. MARRIAGE OF COLUMBINE 332

XXXVI. THE TRAGIC LOADING 341

XXXVII. COLUMBINE IN THE DARK 349

XXXVIII. THE ALIEN CORN 350

XXXIX. INTERMEZZO 359

XL. HARVEST HOME 367

XLI. COLUMBINE HAPPY 370

XLII. SHADED SUNLIGHT 371

XLIII. BOW BELLS 377

XLIV. PICKING UP THREADS 382

XLV. LONDON PRIDE 389

XLVI. MAY MORNING 394

XLVII. NIGHTLIGHT TIME 399

XLVIII. CARNI VALE 404

Chapter I: _The Birth of Columbine_

All day long over the gray Islington Street October, casting pearly
mists, had turned the sun to silver and made London a city of meditation
whose tumbled roofs and parapets and glancing spires appeared hushed and
translucent as in a lake's tranquillity.

The traffic, muted by the glory of a fine autumn day, marched, it
seemed, more slowly and to a sound of heavier drums. Like mountain
echoes street cries haunted the burnished air, while a muffin-man,
abroad too early for the season, swung his bell intermittently with a
pastoral sound. Even the milk-cart, heard in the next street, provoked
the imagination of distant armor. The houses seemed to acquire from the
gray and silver web of October enchantment a mysterious immensity. There
was no feeling of stressful humanity even in the myriad sounds that, in
a sheen of beauty, floated about the day. The sun went down behind roofs
and left the sky plumed with rosy feathers. There was a cold gray minute
before dusk came stealing in, richly and profoundly blue: then night
sprang upon the street, and through the darkness an equinoctial wind
swept, moaning.

Along the gutters the brown leaves danced: the tall plane tree at the
end of the street would not be motionless until December should freeze
the black branches in diapery against a somber sky. Along the gutters
the leaves whispered and ran and shivered and