most moderate
aspirations, as you always complained; and for my part, Fate must in
reason demand her applause of posterity rather than of me. For I
regret the unlived life that I was meant for--the comfortable level
life of little happenings which all my schoolfellows have passed
through in a stolid drove. I was equipped to live that life with
relish, and that life only; and it was denied me. It was demolished in
order that a book or two be made out of its wreckage."

She said, with half-shut eyes: "There is a woman at the root of all
this." And how he laughed!

"Did I not say you were a witch? Why, most assuredly there is."

He motioned with his left hand. Some hundred yards away a young man,
who was carrying two logs toward New Place, had paused to rest. A girl
was with him. Now laughingly she was pretending to assist the porter
in lifting his burden. It was a quaintly pretty vignette, as framed by
the peach leaves, because those two young people were so merry and so
candidly in love. A symbolist might have wrung pathos out of the
girl's desire to aid, as set against her fond inadequacy; and the
attendant playwright made note of it.

"Well, well!" he said: "Young Quiney is a so-so choice, since women
must necessarily condescend to intermarrying with men. But he is far
from worthy of her. Tell me, now, was there ever a rarer piece of
beauty?"

"The wench is not ill-favored," was the dark lady's unenthusiastic
answer. "So!--but who is she?"

He replied: "She is my daughter. Yonder you see my latter muse for
whose dear sake I spin romances. I do not mean that she takes any
lively interest in them. That is not to be expected, since she cannot
read or write. Ask her about the poet we were discussing, and I very
much fear Judith will bluntly inform you she cannot tell a B from a
bull's foot. But one must have a muse of some sort or another; and so
I write about the world now as Judith sees it. My Judith finds this
world an eminently pleasant place. It is full of laughter and
kindliness--for could Herod be unkind to her?--and it is largely
populated by ardent young fellows who are intended chiefly to be
twisted about your fingers; and it is illuminated by sunlight whose
real purpose is to show how pretty your hair is. And if affairs go
badly for a while, and you have done nothing very wrong--why, of
course, Heaven will soon straighten matters satisfactorily. For
nothing that happens to us ca