her?" he inquired.

"Oh, you've shut that safely into a cage of books. I'm not afraid of
it any more."

"It can still sing behind the bars, you know," he warned her.

"No," she said, growing serious again, "it wouldn't--in Sheila's case.
At least it wouldn't unless it got into just the right cage, hung in
the sunshine and the south wind. That's what I'm afraid of,
Peter--that Sheila herself will be snared into the wrong cage!"

But even while Mrs. Caldwell spoke, Sheila was standing at the open
door of the right cage, gazing in with illumined eyes.

The spring was at its height, as warm and ripely blooming as early
summer, and Sheila had slipped away to her favorite haunt of the back
garden. She had taken a book with her, one of Peter's recommendation,
and as she lay on the soft, fresh grass, she idly turned the pages, not
from any desire to read, but for the pleasure of touching the leaves
and knowing that, if she liked, she had only to look within for words
that would create a fairyland as easily as the fingers of the spring
had done.

But presently, sated with mere earth-sweetness, she lifted herself on
her elbow and opened the book widely where her hand had finally rested.
It was the choice of chance, that page; but, as happens every now and
then, chance and the Shaping Power were at that moment one. For
shining on the white leaf, as if written in silver, were the lines that
have stirred every potential poet to rapture and self-knowledge:

--magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Sheila read them with no fore-warning of their moving music. They
flashed, winged, into her tranquil world--and shook it to its
foundations. For the first time the full sense of beauty rushed upon
her, and she caught her breath with the keen, aching ecstasy of it:

--magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

She read the lines again, and now aloud, softly, with a beauty-broken
breath. She had wanted something, and all the while this--_this_--had
been waiting for her. Compared to the joy of it, what was the joy of
looking into a mirror and finding oneself fair? What was any other
beauty beside this beauty of words, of subtle harmony and exquisite
imagery?

And then there came to her the thought that some one--some one just
human like herself--yes, human and young--had written these lines, had
drawn them from the treasure house of