plain! . . . What time passed--I do not know--before their
faces slowly again became visible! His face the sober boy's--was turned
away from her, and he was listening; for above the whispering of leaves a
sound of weeping came from over the hill. It was to that he listened.

And even as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the
pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in
her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him
back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it
could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she
watched him abandon her.

Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and lay there, breathless. And
still that sound of lonely weeping came from over the hill.

Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning eyes that never moved from
him, he lay. Once he turned back toward the water, but fire had died
within him; his hands dropped, nerveless--his young face was all
bewilderment.

And the quiet darkness of the pool waited, and the trees, and those lost
eyes of hers, and my heart. And ever from over the hill came the little
fair maiden's lonely weeping.

Then, slowly dragging his feet, stumbling, half-blinded, turning and
turning to look back, the boy groped his way out through the trees toward
that sound; and, as he went, that dark spirit-elf, abandoned, clasping
her own lithe body with her arms, never moved her gaze from him.

I, too, crept away, and when I was safe outside in the pale evening
sunlight, peered back into the dell. There under the dark trees she was
no longer, but round and round that cage of passion, fluttering and
wailing through the leaves, over the black water, was the magpie,
flighting on its twilight wings.

I turned and ran and ran till I came over the hill and saw the boy and
the little fair, sober maiden sitting together once more on the open
slope, under the high blue heaven. She was nestling her tear-stained
face against his shoulder and speaking already of indifferent things.
And he--he was holding her with his arm and watching over her with eyes
that seemed to see something else.

And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gazing at their sober little
figures, till I awoke and knew I had dreamed all that little allegory of
sacred and profane love, and from it had returned to reason, knowing no
more than ever which was which.
1912.

SHEEP-SHEARIN