hus violated by her enforced entry of them? Who can say, save
those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added
a second even greater?

They found her next day in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew
against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing
their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily,
lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested
against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind
blew the languid meshes of her hair softly, kissing her once, kissing
her twice, and kissing her three times over.

EPILOGUE

Epilogue

Such is the shocking tale of Loveday Strick, a girl who gave her life
for a piece of finery. Is it not small wonder that Miss Le Pettit
lamented the sad lack of proportion in the affair?

All for a length of white satin riband....

And yet, there were two people who thought a little differently from the
rest of Loveday's world on the subject. They were an odd couple to think
alike in anything--it seemed as though even after her death Loveday's
violent unsuitability must persist as a legacy. They were the refined
and polished Mr. Constantine and old Madgy the midwife, a person whom,
naturally, he had never met till the day after the Flora, when his
philosophic curiosity drew him to search for the lost girl in company
with a band of villagers. It was Madgy who led them to the wood, sure
that there was what they sought. Mr. Constantine and Madgy stood looking
at the pale girl when she had been laid upon last year's leaves at their
feet. One of the men would have taken the riband from her, with some
vague notion of returning it, though whether to the graveyard or to the
Manor he could not have told. Mr. Constantine and Madgy put out each a
hand to check him.

"Leave it her," said Mr. Constantine curtly.

"Ay," answered Madgy, speaking freely as was her wont, for she was,
alas, no respecter of persons, "it was more than a white riband to the
maid, for all that the fools say."

Mr. Constantine nodded. He too saw in that length of satin, now soiled
and crumpled, more than a white riband. He saw passion in it--passion
of hope, of ambition, of love, of adoration, of despair. Not a piece
of finery had ended Loveday's stormy course, but a symbol of life
itself, with more in its stained warp and woof than many lives hold
in three-score years and ten. Like religion, this r