on the red girdle on her loins, on the thoughtful
parted lips, on the proud bent brows above which a golden butterfly
floated as above the brows of Psyche.

He smiled; the smile that was so cold to her.

"Look: away over the fields, there comes a peasant with a sickle; he
comes to mow down the reeds to make a bed for his cattle. If he heard
you, he would think you mad."

"They have thought me many things worse. What matter?"

"Nothing at all;--that I know. But you seem to envy that reed--so long
ago--that was chosen?"

"Who would not?"

"Are you so sure? The life of the reed was always pleasant;--dancing
there in the light, playing with the shadows, blowing in the winds; with
the cool waters all about it all day long, and the yellow daffodils and
the blue bell-flowers for its brethren."

"Nay;--how do you know?"

Her voice was low, and thrilled with a curious eager pain.

"How do you know?" she murmured. "Rather,--it was born in the sands,
amongst the stones, of the chance winds, of the stray germs,--no one
asking, no one heeding, brought by a sunbeam, spat out by a toad--no one
caring where it dropped. Rather,--it grew there by the river, and such
millions of reeds grew with it, that neither waters nor winds could
care for a thing so common and worthless, but the very snakes twisting
in and out despised it, and thrust the arrows of their tongues through
it in scorn. And then--I think I see!--the great god walked by the edge
of the river, and he mused on a gift to give man, on a joy that should
be a joy on the earth for ever; and he passed by the lily white as snow,
by the thyme that fed the bees, by the gold heart in the arum flower, by
the orange flame of the tall sandrush, by all the great water-blossoms
which the sun kissed, and the swallows loved, and he came to the one
little reed pierced with the snakes' tongues, and all alone amidst
millions. Then he took it up, and cut it to the root, and killed
it;--killed it as a reed,--but breathed into it a song audible and
beautiful to all the ears of men. Was that death to the reed?--or life?
Would a thousand summers of life by the waterside have been worth that
one thrill of song when a god first spoke through it?"

Her face lightened with a radiance to which the passion of her words was
pale and poor; the vibrations of her voice grew sonorous and changing as
the sounds of music itself; her eyes beamed through unshed tears as
planets through the rain.