f all the creatures of the wood felt the
languorous spell of the hour. Miranda looked about for a resting place.
She was standing near the main path in a partly cleared space, a sort of
fairy ring, in the center of which was a giant tree that had suffered a
lingering death from a stroke of lightning. Lithe and graceful, with the
sap of a new life coursing through their veins, its comrades were waving
and beckoning to each other and welcoming the birds to leafy shelters,
while, stark and stiff with decay, the stricken one stood like the
skeleton at the feast, stretching its helpless arms skyward as if
imploring Nature to raise it from the dead. All around it were the kings
of the forest, the fruitful walnut and hickory whose leaves smell like
the "close-bit thyme" on the downs of Sussex by the sea; the tasseled
oak, and the elm more graceful than any graveyard willow; but moved by
some hidden impulse, this girl whose youth was almost gone chose the
dead tree for her own. The ground was littered with strips of bark that
the electric storm had torn from the trunk. She gathered these and laid
them at the root for protection from the damp earth. Then, seating
herself, she leaned back against the trunk of the tree and drew a long,
sighing breath of deep content. Through the woods on the other side of
the path she could see the field of young wheat, and she had a vague,
dreamy thought of the summer's heat that would ripen the grain and of
the harvest with its terrible toil for the women of the farm. The heat
of summer and the cold of winter were alike hateful to her, but no
thought of either could break this blissful calm. Like an evil dream the
winter was gone, and like an evil dream the summer too would go, and
both would be forgotten. What mattered heat or cold? Every winter had
its spring; every summer its autumn; and the heart need remember only
its springs and autumns. She looked upward into the depths of pale blue
ether, and followed the course of the white, drifting clouds. O, ecstasy
of ecstasies! To live on such an earth with such a sky above! Looking at
the sky was like looking into a vast crystal. Farther and farther into
space her gaze seemed to penetrate, and presently her soul began to
follow her gaze. Something in that boundless space seemed to be drawing
her out of the body. Her breath was so light it would hardly have moved
a gossamer; her eyelids drooped slowly and heavily, and she slept a
sleep too deep for d