d golden shores, of jungles and strange cities of the
coast, of islands lost in seas of sapphire and emerald? of caravans and
towers of ivory? of haunted caverns and deserted temples? where, a
child always, with her darling boy, she had had such adventures as
would have filled a hundred earthly lives. They had built huts in
uninhabited places, or made a twisted bower of strong green creepers,
and lived their primitive paradisal life wanting nothing but each
other; sometimes, through accidents and illness, they had nursed each
other, with such unwearied tenderness that death himself had to
withdraw, defeated by love. Once on a ship there had been mutiny, and
she alone stood by him against a throng; once savages had captured her,
and he, outwitting them, had rescued her, riding through leagues of
prairie-land and forest, holding her before him on the saddle. In
nearly all these adventures it was as though they had met for the first
time, and were struck anew with the dumb wonder of first love, and the
strange shy sweetness of wooing and confession. Yet they were but
playing above truth. For the knowledge was always between them that
they were bound immortally by a love which, having no end, seemed also
to have had no beginning. They quarreled sometimes--this was playing
too. She put, now herself, now him, in the wrong. And either
reconciliation was sweet. But it was she who was oftenest at fault, his
forgiveness was so dear to her. And still, this was but playing at it.
When all these adventures and pretenses were done, they stood heart to
heart, and out of their only meeting in life built up eternal truth and
told each other. They told it inexhaustibly.

And so, when her father left her free to go, Helen lived on still in
the mill of dreams, and kept her millstones grinding. Two years went
by. And her hard gray lonely life laid its hand on her hair and her
countenance. Her father had worn her out before her time.

It was only invisible grain in the mill now. The peasants came no
longer with their corn. She had enough to live on, and her long
seclusion unfitted her for strange men in the mill, and people she must
talk to. And so long was the habit of the recluse on her, that though
her soul flew leagues her body never wandered more than a few hundred
yards from her home. Some who had heard of her, and had glimpses of
her, spoke to her when they met; but they could make no headway with
this sweet, shy, silent woman. Yet c