were well
rewarded.

The snow-flake was, as he suspected, as much alive as the wind; and that
was singing, shouting, dying away in ecstasies, at this very moment.

He glanced at her. Lithe, sparkling, graceful, she gathered her soft
drapery about her, and stood poised delicately on one foot, while she
looked around the apartment in which she found herself. Fred could see
that she was moulded more beautifully than the Graces,--by so much more
as Nature is fairer than all Art,--and that she had an inward pure
coldness, beside which Diana's was only stone. Yet it was not
indifference, like that of the wild huntress,--not an incapacity to
feel, but only that her time had not come; when it should, she would
melt as well as another. Now she stood still and calm. She did not
once look at him. She had seen human beings before,--plenty of them.
Something else attracted her,--thrilled her, evidently; for the
faintest rose-color suffused her beautiful form; she changed her
attitude, and bent forward her graceful head.

Something about "warming his hands by thinking on the frosty Caucasus"
passed through Fred's mind, and some law of association impelled him to
look at the fire. It was queer enough, that, as many times as he had
looked at that fire by the hour together, he had never before noticed
its shape or expression. Only last night, he had watched it, dancing and
flickering just as it did now, and never once suspected the truth!

Mailed figures! Yes, plenty of them,--golden-helmeted and sworded like
the seraphim! A glorious band, gathering, twining, shooting past each
other,--jousting, tilting,--with blazing banners, and a field broader
than that of the "Cloth of Gold"; for this reached to and mingled with
the clouds--yea, tinted them with flame-color and roses,--and garlanded
the earth with crimson blossoms that nestled among her forests on the
far-off horizon. What a wide field, indeed! And how far might these
blazes and flames go, when once they set out? To the stars, perhaps.
Fred did not see what should stop them. The atmosphere might, possibly.
He must study that out.

Meanwhile how strangely far he could see! What a power it was! What a
new interest it gave to Nature! Nature, he must confess, had always
seemed rather flat to him, on the whole. He had always liked
the imitations better than the original,--pictures better than
people,--busts better than philosophers. But now the case is altered. He
has got what his