d, what
depths fathomed, at such times, if men knew! I feared lest he should see
me as I am, in those great masses of warm light lying before him, as I
feared he saw when he said amber harmonized with me,--all being things
not polarized, not organized, without centre, so to speak. But it
escaped him, and he wrought on. Did he succeed? Bless you! he might as
well have painted the sun; and who could do that? No; but shades and
combinations that he had hardly touched or known, before, he had to
lavish now; he learned more than some years might have taught him; he,
who worshipped beauty, saw how thoroughly I possessed it; he has told
me that through me he learned the sacredness of color. "Since he loves
beauty so, why does he not love me?" I asked myself; and perhaps the
feverish hope and suspense only lit up that beauty and fed it with fresh
fires. Ah, the July days! Did you ever wander over barren, parched
stubble-fields, and suddenly front a knot of red Turk's-cap lilies,
flaring as if they had drawn all the heat and brilliance from the land
into their tissues? Such were they. And if I were to grow old and gray,
they would light down all my life, and I could be willing to lead a
dull, grave age, looking back and remembering them, warming myself
forever in their constant youth. If I had nothing to hope, they would
become my whole existence. Think, then, what it will be to have all days
like those!

He never satisfied himself, as he might have done, had he known me
better,--and he never _shall_ know me!--and used to look at me for the
secret of his failure, till I laughed; then the look grew wistful, grew
enamored. By-and-by we left the pictures. We went into the woods, warm,
dry woods; we stayed there from morning till night. In the burning
noons, we hung suspended between two heavens, in our boat on glassy
forest-pools, where now and then a shoal of white lilies rose and
crowded out the under-sky. Sunsets burst like bubbles over us. When the
hidden thrushes were breaking one's heart with music, and the sweet fern
sent up a tropical fragrance beneath our crushing steps, we came home to
rooms full of guests and my father's genial warmth. What a month it was!

One day papa went up into New Hampshire; Aunt Willoughby was dead; and
one day Lu came home.

She was very pale and thin. Her eyes were hollow and purple.

"There is some mistake, Lu," I said. "It is you who are dead, instead of
Aunt Willoughby."

"Do I look so