ed house out to the sunlit lawns. Her skirt
swept the enamelled turf; she touched the tallest flowers as she passed,
and they bloomed no worse for that light caress. Poetry was in her every
motion, and she was too beautiful a thing to be so sad. She made no
parade of grief. Faint smiles came and went, and all things added to her
birthright of grace. She was the Countess's almoner: every day she did
good, lessening pain, whispering balm to the anguish-stricken, speaking
as with authority to troubled souls. Back from the hovel to stately
houses she went, and lo! the maid of honor, exquisite, perfect as a
flower. Men wooed, but might not win her. They came and went, but to her
it was no matter. In her eyes still burned the patient splendor with
which she waited for the tide to take her, bearing her out beyond the
shallows to one who also tarried.

With a gentle sound the fountain rose and fell in a gray stone basin.
Around it were set the rose-trees, and beyond the roses tall box and yew
most fantastically clipped screened from observation the fairy spot.
Damaris, slowly entering, became at once the spirit of the place. She
paced the fountain's grassy rim to a rustic seat and took it for her
chair of state, from which for a while, with her white hands behind her
head, she watched the silver spray and the blue midsummer sky. A lark
sang, but so high in the blue that its joyous note jarred not the
languor of the place. Damaris opened her book--but what need of written
poesy? The red roses smelled so sweet that 'twas as though she lay
against the heart of one royal bloom. She left her throne and trod the
circle, and in both hands she took the heavy blossoms and pressed them
to her lips. The odor was like warm wine. "Now and for all my life,"
said Damaris, "for me one faded rose! Afterwards, two in a garden like
this--like this!"

The grass was so green and warm that presently she lay down upon it, her
head pillowed upon her arm, her eyes gazing through the fountain mist
and down the emerald slopes to where ran the elmwood avenue. She gazed
in idleness, through half-shut eyelids, wrapped in lullabies and drowsy
warmth. Hoof-beats between the elms troubled her not. When through the
mist of falling water and the veil of drooping leaves she saw riding
towards the house a youth clad in blue, the horse and rider seemed but
figures in a piece of tapestry. Her satin eyelids closed, and if other
riders presently showed in the tapestr