ing of the sap in the trees.

Days, too, in mid-Paris, in the Luxembourg Gardens, among the nursery maids
and working folk; at cafes on the remoter boulevards, where the kindly life
of Paris, still untouched by touristdom, passes up and down, and the spring
gets into the step of youth and sparkles in a girl's eyes. At the window
even of the _appartement_ in the Boulevard Raspail, when the air was
startlingly clear and scented and brought the message of spring from far
lands, from the golden shores of the Mediterranean, from the windy mountain
tops of Auvergne, from the broad, tender green fields of Central France,
from every heart and tree and flower, from Paris itself, quivering with
life. At such times they would not talk, both interpreting the message in
their own ways, yet both drawn together into a common mood in which they
vaguely felt that the earth was still a Land of Romance, that the mystery
of rebirth was repeating itself according to unchanging and perpetual law;
that inconsiderable, forlorn human atoms though they were, the law would
inevitably affect them too, and cause new hopes, new desires, and new
happiness to bud and flower in their hearts.

During these spring days there began to dawn in the girl's soul a knowledge
of the deeper meaning of things. When she first met Septimus and
delightedly regarded him as a new toy, she was the fluffy, frivolous little
animal of excellent breeding and half education, so common in English
country residential towns, with the little refinements somewhat coarsened,
the little animalism somewhat developed, the little brain somewhat
sharpened, by her career on the musical-comedy stage. Now there were signs
of change. A glimmering notion of the duty of sacrifice entered her head.
She carried it out by appearing one day, when Septimus was taking her for a
drive, in the monstrous nightmare of a hat. It is not given to breathing
male to appreciate the effort it cost her. She said nothing; neither did
he. She sat for two hours in the victoria, enduring the tortures of the
uglified, watching him out of the tail of her eye and waiting for a sign of
recognition. At last she could endure it no longer.

"I put this thing on to please you," she said.

"What thing?"

"The hat you gave me."

"Oh! Is that it?" he murmured in his absent way. "I'm so glad you like it."

He had never noticed it. He had scarcely recognized it. It had given him no
pleasure. She had made of herself a s