wild creature, given to
solitary roaming and much scribbling of astonishingly good poems in a
little note-book. Blanche said she had genius, and, though Blanche would
have said it just then if it had been true or not, there was something
not without a touch of genius animating the rough, vivid verses of the
monkey-girl. Blanche was "very fond of the little thing," but did not
see much of her. Ishmael not unnaturally absorbed the forefront of her
attention.

One day, when Blanche had been two weeks at Paradise, a morning more
golden, of a stiller warmth than any yet, dawned, and she knew it would
bring Ishmael over early with some plan for a picnic. The little garden
lay steeped in sunshine that turned the stonecrop on the roof to fire
and made the slates iridescent as a pigeon's breast. The rambler that
half-hid the whitewashed lintel threw over it a delicate tracery of
shadow which quivered slightly as though it breathed in a charmed sleep.
Fuchsias drooped their purple and scarlet heads, dahlias, with a
grape-like bloom on their velvety petals, stood stiffly staring, and
against the granite wall giant sunflowers hung their heavy heads on a
curve of sticky green stem. In the sloping fields beyond the lane the
stubble stood glittering and the great golden arishmows cast over it
blue pools of shade. Beyond the fields could be seen the sparkling blue
of the lazily-heaving Atlantic, merging into a heat-haze which glistened
with a jewel-like quality at the world's rim.

Blanche opened the door of the cottage and stood upon the threshold,
swinging her hat in her hand. A white butterfly fluttered down aimlessly
as a scrap of torn paper, and a bee hung buzzing on a sustained note of
content, drowned for a moment as it swung with arched body in the cup of
a flower, then booming forth as it shot out and poised on wings that
seemed nothing but a glistening blur. Blanche stood with eyes half shut
and sniffing nostrils, and as she felt the warm caress of the sun, so
positive as to seem almost tangible, on her bare head, she stretched
herself, cat-like, with a deep sigh of content.

Life was good here, away from the old faces and the old pursuits. She
had been at Paradise only two weeks, but they had been weeks of sun and
soft winds and sweet smells, and the impressionable surface of her mind,
that beneath was so shallow and so unmalleable, was gradually responding
to the influences around her.

Almost imperceptibly to herself h