tail. Then she asked:

"And I--what will become of me?"

"You, Athanasia? There is a great future before you, little woman, and
I and my love can only mar it. Try to forget me and go your way. I am
only the epitome of unhappiness and ill-success."

But she laughed and would have none of it.

Will you ever forget that day, Athanasia? How the little gamins,
Creole throughout, came half shyly near the log, fishing, and
exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the silent
couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black
water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue in an
attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This Athanasia
insisted must go back into its native black waters, and paid the price
the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom. The gamins laughed and
chattered in their soft patois; the Don smiled tenderly upon Athanasia,
and she durst not look at the reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo
sadness yield a foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a
multi-hued garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen. Her
keen black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously at
the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it seemed the
drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more pronounced in its
prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let us go," she said; "the
eternal feminine has spoiled it all."

The bayou flows as calmly, as darkly, as full of hidden passions as
ever. On a night years after, the moon was shining upon it with a
silvery tenderness that seemed brighter, more caressingly lingering
than anywhere within the old city. Behind, there rose the spires and
towers; before, only the reeds, green now, and soft in their rustlings
and whisperings for the future. False reeds! They tell themselves of
their happiness to be, and it all ends in dry stalks and drizzling
skies. The mocking-bird in the fragrant orange grove sends out his
night song, and blends it with the cricket's chirp, as the blossoms of
orange and magnolia mingle their perfume with the earthy smell of a
summer rain just blown over. Perfect in its stillness, absolute in its
beauty, tenderly healing in its suggestion of peace, the night in its
clear-lighted, cloudless sweetness enfolds Athanasia, as she stands on
the levee and gazes down at the old log, now almost hidden in the
luxuriant grass.

"It was the eternal feminine that