he Sun God is dead!" said Aldred, looking out of the window one
damp afternoon at the cheerless prospect, and recalling Miss Drummond's
lesson on Northern Mythology. "Loki has killed him with the piece of
mistletoe, and he will never return to Asgard. All the AEsir are weeping
for him, and the earth will be given up now to the frost giants and the
spirits of the winds."

"Won't he ever come back?" said Mabel, falling in with her friend's
humour.

"Just for a little while; but he always has to go in the winter, like
Proserpine, who was bound to spend half the year with Pluto in Hades. I
suppose there's no country, except the lost Atlantis, where it keeps
summer all the year round."

"Why, you sound quite melancholy!"

"So I am."

"But why?"

"I don't know, except that it is so sad to see the summer gone."

Aldred could scarcely explain her attitude of mind, though she was
conscious that the change in the world without affected her strongly.
She had an extreme love of nature, an intense appreciation of beautiful
things. No ancient Greek ever joyed in the sunshine more than she, or
took greater pleasure in the scent of the flowers, or the blue of the
sea and sky, or the song of the birds in springtime. Her artistic,
poetical temperament was highly sensitive to all outward impressions;
she was so keenly alive to the great, dramatic human tragedy and comedy
that is being enacted around us, so in touch with the wonder and mystery
of life, that what would pass unnoticed by many was to her the very
essence of being.

Few people had ever sympathized with this side of her disposition. Her
father had not realized it, Keith could not understand it, and Aunt
Bertha had repressed it sternly. Modern schoolgirls are certainly not
sentimental; they are more prone to laugh at poetic fancies than to
admire them: and Aldred knew that on this score she would probably meet
with ridicule from her form-mates. In consequence, she confined herself
in public to the practical and prosaic, and, with the exception of an
occasional private confidence to Mabel, kept her reflections locked in
her own bosom.

There was certainly nothing in the atmosphere of the Grange to foster
any tendency towards morbidness. The days were so fully occupied as to
leave no time for dreaming. Though Aldred was clever, it took her whole
energies to secure the place that she wished in the school. She was
determined to be head of her Form, and, holding that obje