looking toward where the distant hills shut in the horizon. As, resting on one knee beside the flower-tub I was still engaged in filling, I looked up toward her, the very incarnation of youth and loveliness and noble thought, there came to me one of those moments that come to all,—one of those moments when, with shuddering awe, we recognize for once what we really are, mere drops of spray tossed up from the abyss of eternity, and poised for an instant ere redescending to the mysterious source from which we sprung. For her, too, and for me, would come the day when other thoughtful eyes, gazing on the fair world illumined by that self-same sun, would endeavor to realize that that sun had once shone for others once as young and hopeful as themselves.
Some such expression she must have read in my eyes as she turned toward me.
"My father says that I am too much given to pursue such fancies," she said with a slight laugh. "He warms me, that, unless I take care, I shall find myself some day writing verse."
It may here be remarked, that not only was verse-making regarded as a very poor employment of time, but the poetic temperament itself, as experience had shown, was far from conducive to happiness in its possessor. Hulmar himself possessed it in no slight degree, but had counteracted its influence largely by assiduous application to the most abstruse studies.
The slight estimation in which the versifier was held at this period arose from no lack of appreciation of the truly poetic, but from the despair of attaining any result worthy of comparison with the best efforts of earlier
