hear her say as plainly as if it were
yesterday, "I don't think one ever forgets the spot where one lived as
a child." He could see the quaint little figure sitting on the piazza
at North Riverboro and watch it disappear in the lilac bushes when he
gave the memorable order for three hundred cakes of Rose-Red and
Snow-White soap.

A word or two soon told him that her grief was of another sort, and her
mood was so absent, so sensitive and tearful, that he could only assure
her of his sympathy and beg that he might come soon to the brick house
to see with his own eyes how she was faring.

Adam thought, when he had put her on the train and taken his leave,
that Rebecca was, in her sad dignity and gravity, more beautiful than
he had ever seen her,--all-beautiful and all-womanly. But in that
moment's speech with her he had looked into her eyes and they were
still those of a child; there was no knowledge of the world in their
shining depths, no experience of men or women, no passion, nor
comprehension of it. He turned from the little country station to walk
in the woods by the wayside until his own train should be leaving, and
from time to time he threw himself under a tree to think and dream and
look at the glory of the foliage. He had brought a new copy of The
Arabian Nights for Rebecca, wishing to replace the well-worn old one
that had been the delight of her girlhood; but meeting her at such an
inauspicious time, he had absently carried it away with him. He turned
the pages idly until he came to the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful
Lamp, and presently, in spite of his thirty-four years, the old tale
held him spellbound as it did in the days when he first read it as a
boy. But there were certain paragraphs that especially caught his eye
and arrested his attention,--paragraphs that he read and reread,
finding in them he knew not what secret delight and significance. These
were the quaintly turned phrases describing the effect on the once poor
Aladdin of his wonderful riches, and those descanting upon the beauty
and charm of the Sultan's daughter, the Princess Badroulboudour:--

_Not only those who knew Aladdin when he played in the streets like a
vagabond did not know him again; those who had seen him but a little
while before hardly knew him, so much were his features altered; such
were the effects of the lamp, as to procure by degrees to those who
possessed it, perfections agreeable to the rank the right use of it
adv