ues and unfathomable
greens, shot with such gleams of light as made her heart throb, for
they were like the gleams that shoot through our dreams, the light that
just eludes us when we wake.

She went into the mill, trembling from head to foot. She was not
conscious of moving, but she found herself presently standing by the
grinding stones, with sound rushing through her and white dust whirling
round her. She gazed and gazed into the labyrinth of the shell as
though she must see to its very core; but she could not. So she
unfastened her blue gown and laid the shell against her young heart. It
was for the first time of so many times that I know not whether when,
twenty years later, she did it for the last time, they outnumbered the
silver hairs among her black ones. And the silver by then were
uncountable. Yet on the day when Helen began her twenty years of lonely
listening--

(But having said this, Martin Pippin grasped the rope just above
Jennifer's hand, and pulled it with such force that the swing, instead
of swinging back and forth, as a swing should, reeled sideways so that
the swinger had much ado to keep her seat.

Jennifer: Heaven help me!

Martin: Heaven help ME! I need its help more sorely than you do.

Jennifer: Oh, you should be punished, not helped!

Martin: I have been punished, and the punished require help more than
censure, or scorn, or anger, or any other form of righteousness.

Jennifer: Who has punished you? And for what?

Martin: You, Mistress Jennifer. For my bad story.

Jennifer: I do not remember doing so. The story is only begun. I am
sure it will be a very good story.

Martin: Now you are compassionate, because I need comfort. But the
truth is that, good or bad, you care no more for my story. For I saw a
tear of vexation come into your eye.

Jennifer: It was not vexation. Not exactly vexation. And doubtless
Helen will have experiences which we shall all be glad to hear. But all
the same I wish--

Martin: You wish?

Jennifer: That she was not going to grow old in her loneliness. Because
all lovers are young.

Martin: You have spoken the most beautiful of all truths. Does the
grass grow high enough by the swing for you to pluck me two blades?

Jennifer: I think so. Yes. What do you want with them?

Martin: I want but one of them now. You shall only give me the other
if, at the end of my tale, you agree that its lovers are as green as
this blade and that.)

On the day (re