ange that goes on for ever. I feel as if I should go mad at times,
because it will not stop, either in myself or others."

"Ah, that is a dreadful thought!"

"It comes to me so insistently, perhaps, because of my roving life," she
said.

She paused for a moment, and then she fell into one of her exalted
moods, when she seemed to lose consciousness of the ordinary conditions
around her, or rather to pierce deeper into their significance and
beauty. Her speech would, at such times, become rhythmic and
picturesque; she evidently saw vivid images before her, in which her
ideas embodied themselves.

"Most people who live always in one place see the changes creeping on so
gradually that they scarcely feel them, but with me this universal flux
displays itself pitilessly, I cannot escape. Go where I will, there is
something to measure the changes by. A shoal of yellow leaves whispers
to me of seasons long ago, and the old past days, with their own
intimate character that nothing ever repeats, flash before me again with
the vividness of yesterday; and a flight of birds--ah! if I could
express what they recall! The dead years pass again in a great
procession, a motley company--some like emperors, crowned and richly
dowered, with the sound of trumpets and the tramping of many obsequious
feet; and others like beggars, despoiled and hungry, trudging along a
dusty high road, or like grey pilgrims bound, with bleeding feet, for a
far-off shrine."

They entered a little beech-wood, whose leaves made a light of their
own, strange and mystical.

"Yours must have been a wonderful life!" said Hadria.

"Yes, I have seen and felt many things," answered Miss Du Prel, stirred
by the intoxication of the motion and the wind and the sunlight, "life
has been to me a series of intense emotions, as it will be to you, I
fear----"

"You fear?" said Hadria.

"Yes; for that means suffering. If you feel, you are at the mercy of all
things. Every wind that blows uses you as an AEolian harp."

"That must be charming, at least for those who live in your
neighbourhood," said Hadria.

"No; for often the harp rings false. Its strings get loosened; one hangs
slack and jars, and where then is your harmony?"

"One would run the risk of many things rather than let one's strings lie
dumb," said Hadria.

"What a dangerous temperament you have!" cried Valeria, looking round at
the glowing face beside her.

"I must take my risks," said Hadria.

"I