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and bound over by that silent grant to a life of valour and selfsacrifice, not by any means necessarily conspicuous, nor likely to attract the world's attention.

Nothing was said of her part in this-of the sacrifice made. without hesitation or reserve, of the cheerful courage through long waiting, with which she looked forward to his return, and to that which never was to be. Though no hard-hearted wretch, not even her lover himself took these much into account."

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At last he came back. Again the spring was quickening, and the girl sat musing under the firs, for old times' sake. There was not a sign of the plunging, beating heart, save a deeper pallor in her pale, fair face. To meet again! To put behind us for ever the wearisome months, those interminable years! How much may not that mean, even to ordinary commonplace people!

Yet, strange to say, from this happy day onwards, an undefinable sense of loss hung over the Princess; something which not even to herself could she explain. Was it perhaps in her lover's face, or just in her own unfolding mind, that she first apprehended the source of her misgiving? Thus, one day, a grief fell upon her, than which, some say, there is none of sharper edge or deeper wound. It came about very simply, upon a day much like other days, out in the sunshine. What passed between the two is really unknown, and only by what followed can any guess the bitter truth. The Princess said little, but, as she looked at him, the smile died for ever out of her lover's eyes.

It was no common quarrel: the struggle took place deep in the quiet of her own strenuous nature, and her decision was arrived at by what instinct she could hardly define. To raise reproaches occurred to neither. And, indeed, she had no mode of judging conduct which she neither doubted nor questioned. Had that conduct been cowardly or hypocritical, she was equally incapable of suspicious thoughts; and this is not so much as hinted.

Simply he was not what she imagined, had never been the man she chose to believe; had imposed on her a character other than that upon which she had relied, and she knew, as people sometimes suddenly do know, that he had failed her. It was as if she had opened her heart like a flower to a blighting wind, and thrown wide in vain those doors that cannot be shut again, in giving to him the confidences of her inmost soul.

Strong feeling swept aside the untried judgment, and left

merc impulse to its hasty work, and her natural acuteness fell short of the perception that, only in accepting character as it is, can we raise it towards that which we would have it be; and that the sorest of all injustice, as distinct from the idealising power of love, is the unwitting injustice of the lover in failing to

see true.

But then the Princess was not only an unreasonable creature, dreaming of perfections never yet attained by mortal, she was also a passionate, romantic girl, unaware of herself. She was a lover of actions that fit the best side of life, knowing no other side; and though not in this at all original, bestowed her keenest scorn on the very shade of cruelty and hypocrisy. Alas, poor child! nothing short of cruel did it seem to her-this present suffering, so new, so keen; nothing less than false could she think him, who thus embodied the silent catastrophe of her dreams.

So she turned from her lover, and never realised what, in a dim, miserable way, he knew-that she too had failed him.

Then followed a parting, and this time he went away, no longer hers who loved him, and no more to return. What burden he carried with him, only death discovered, who, coming to him at last, bore on those awful lips the message that Love had long forgiven him.

But the tale does not stop here. Life goes on, no matter how final its emergencies, nor how salt our tears.

Those steps died on the summer air, they grew faint, were gone. And now the girl moved, as if she would go away too, whither, she neither knew nor cared; when, raising her eyes, she saw something lying on the grass, very white in the sunlight. It was one of her doves, beautiful, stark, and dead. She stooped, and, in her tender way, carried it into the garden. Great welling tears now stood in the clear eyes. She was child and woman in one; an hour, a day before, full of gay impulses and pealing laughter, now struck into ready tears and inconsolable grief.

As she looked at the bird, she saw into her own heart, and the hitherto unhurt Peace that dwelt there-that too was dead. She bade the gardener cut off the two white wings, and turned away, gazing over the hills, while it was done. Then with her own small hands she buried the poor tender body. Whence this fancy? Perhaps it was that such lovely things should never be hidden away. For how fair, how wonderful those

feathers were, how delicately fashioned! A new longing came over her, and the king's poem rose in her memory, because the feeling was hers which is common to all sad people: 'What would she not give to fly away and be at rest!'

Just then the Poet-painter, who was wandering alone among the trees, down by a hidden stream, came out from within the shadows. Was it the sudden flight of a hawk sighting prey, or was it some subtler influence that had broken in upon the tenor of his dreams? Presently there stood the Princess, with the white wings in her hands.

He divined trouble, but not what the trouble was, and, like other dreamers, returned to his dreams. Ever possessed by lovely thoughts, he was just then meditating the picture of an angel. The features he already saw; he knew how he would colour the hair, and he had chosen the long green garment, as green as the grass by the stream.. But the wings troubled him, for how could any man paint these? Thus musing, he came up the gentle slope. And as the Princess smiled sadly into his eyes, and held out the dead bird's feathers with a pitiful gesture, there sprang a new light into his face and he exclaimed

'I can paint my angel's wings from these!'

And so he did, keeping them safe and white all through the weary, sorrowful years of his toil and thought in the great city. At that time few cared for him; fewer still cared to understand him.

Only, among the few, the Princess, whom he rarely saw again, would go and stand before his Green Angel, and clasp her nervous hands to forget for a moment the whirl and struggle of life. She too had entered upon that, had her part to play, and must acknowledge the days of dreaming as over and gone. Upon her sweet face a shadow seemed to rest, as it were the moving of unshed tears. The sight of the great winged angel stirred old and familiar memories, and an inner light radiated from the whole pure countenance. If the poetpainter had loved her, what wonder? But if he did, none knew it.

And, in time, it came to be his turn to die. Then the dull world awoke and began to admire the man, whose shrinking spirit they had wounded, whose genius they had overlooked.

There were faults on both sides, no doubt, but in any case this was not at all the first time that people had shown ignorance, and not meant to be unkind. For which of us really

knows how tender a human soul is, how fine, how easily hurt by hardness or neglect, how ready to love, how dwarfed and embittered by harsh, ungentle ways?

The world did its best, though that best was too late, as far as the poet was concerned. So, he being dead, they sold his books and all his quaint and precious possessions. And the Princess, who wanted some remembrance of him, passed one day into the dingy, forsaken house of a once fashionable part in the great city.

Here she bought a few of his books, and as she turned to go her eye rested on a heap of rubbish collected in the middle of the floor.

There, dusty now, but in form still beautiful, lay the two white wings of her dove. She picked them up.

May I buy these?'

An old man stood near, taking charge. He looked keenly at her, aware, as all were who beheld her, of some natural distinction and pathetic charm, and then he made reply.

'Take them; he would have liked to give them to you; he painted his angel's wings from these.' There was a pause. 'Take them-and anything else you like.'

But the painter's friend cared for nothing more. And ever after, she treasured those blurred, spoiled feathers in her own little inner room, where none were admitted, save those only who knew her inmost heart.

And that heart knew itself. To her, as to all, there came a day when she began to draw upon the past, to have treasure in some heaven, to look less eagerly, if not less earnestly, to the future. Fresh and young as she was, in that day she began to grow old. But the command of herself thus gained seemed to her merely the beginning of her true life.

Between that unsophisticated maid, that visionary child, and this fearless, wise, sympathetic woman, what suffering, and what reward? Only the pure metal submits to that alchemy.

Out of that gentle, arbitrary innocence, of itself priceless, has been wrought this loveliest evolution. The profound attraction asserts itself of a soul cognisant of the world, open-armed in its charity, but incapable of lowering its ideals to any baser uses.

Endings are often not quite happy just when they are sweetest, as everybody knows. This Princess lived to lose her grief, but not to forget it, nor the days under the fir-trees by

her old home.

Only when Christmas-tide came, and she found herself in the great city, where half the people ate too much, and the other half went starving; when she knew that, for the first time, her New Year would not dawn over the snow-laden hills, the old yearning returned, and mingled with the joy of the kindly season. She had parted, as we only part once, from the sweet past.

Gay among the gay, spending and being spent, lavishing her brightness and great loving nature on all around; the love of life strong within her, and the love of love stronger than all, she yet knew the isolation of all rare and thoughtful minds, and longed to be alone, to be at rest.

And that rest came. For when the spring time returned, and the first cuckoo found voice among the quiet valleys, when the young birds were full of ecstasy and song, the Princess vanished

away.

In many hearts there was heavy grief; the heedless worldher world-wept over that loss just as it had done over the poetpainter.

The erring, the weary, and the sick, missed her dear presence, and the children wondered why she never came again to kiss their sleepy eyes, and bless them with 'Good night.' Yes; she too is dead.

LAST WORDS.

Among the generous and the loyal who gladden and support our lives; among the noble and the pure of whom we cannot have enough; among the bright and loving spirits of whom we have such dire and daily need-ah! how could this one forsake us so?

Is it to fail? For your sake and mine, and the world's in general? Yes.

Yet, how can we tell?

'We who say as we go,

Strange to think by the way—

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day.'

MARY R. L. BRYCE,

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