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The stranger strode in silence by his side in the burning sun, impenetrable in his own morose shadow. But the Magnolia was fragrant, like its namesake, with mint and herbal odors, cool with sprinkled floors, and sparkling with broken ice on its counters, like dewdrops on white, unfolded petals and slightly soporific with the subdued murmur of droning loungers, who were heavy with its sweets.

On the shapely curve of her neck it hung, like dewdrops upon a white hyacinth; and I was vexed that Tom should have the chance to see it there. But even if she had read my thoughts, or outrun them with her own, Lorna turned away, and softly took the jewels from the place which so much adorned them. And as she turned away, they sparkled through the rich dark waves of hair.

And yet the one lived so solely and entirely in the other, that no one could see whether the notes of the Nightingale were floating lilies, or the lilies visible notes, falling like dewdrops from the Nightingale's throat. The Child's heart was full of joy even to the brim.

The sky was blue, just flecked with little clouds; the dewdrops sparkled upon every leaf and blade of grass; touches of mist clung about the hollows, and the sweet breath of the awakened earth was full of the perfect scent of an English June, which is in its way even more delicious than the spicy odours of the tropics.

"I love it too," answered the balsamine. "Whispering here as we are now, alone in the dark, only knowing the other is near, only seeing the gleam of each other's eyes. But the morning, too, is beautiful at sunrise, when the dewdrops glisten and the leaves quiver in the wakening breeze." "True, that is true. All times are beautiful, all life.

In dealing with my experiences in the Press gallery of the House of Commons, I had occasion to speak of the curious premonition which assailed me at the instant at which the unfortunate Dr Kenealy made use of the rhetorical symbol of the dewdrops and the lion's mane. I do not know that I have any right to claim the possession of any psychic faculty which goes beyond the ordinary, but I do know that that sort of premonition of a coming circumstance has not been at all rare in my experience. Something very like it befell me whilst I was living at Rochefort, and in that instance it proved of signal service to me, I wrote the final scene of Joseph's Coat on a certain wintry day and was within a page or two of the conclusion of the story when I was called to luncheon. In the ardour of work I had allowed the fire to die out in my bedroom stove, and encountering on the stairs a certain lout, whose name was Victor, who did duty about the stables of the hotel, I gave him instructions to see to it. Ten minutes later a dreadful inspiration occurred to me, and I dashed upstairs. The man was kneeling before the stove and was in the very act of striking a lucifer match when I arrived. A glance at my writing-table showed me that the impulse on which I had acted was only too well-founded. The man had taken a dozen pages of my manuscript, and an instant later he would have set them blazing. In those days I wrote on an unruled large quarto, and since it was my habit to crowd sixteen hundred words into a page, the loss of time and labour would have been, at least, considerable. I recovered my MS. all crumpled and dirty, and I applied to that ostler pretty nearly all the opprobrious names in his language with which I was acquainted. "Mais, monsieur," the criminal responded, "le papier était déj

Muffie nearly fell asleep, Pauline's hand grew cramped, and still the fairy continued to "have" things. "'Her dress was of silver spider's silk studded all over with dewdrops'," went on Lynn, beginning now energetically upon every detail of the wardrobe of the "beautious" being.

The growing fields and the grassy mountain slopes are hers; and the rustling green leaves, and the sparkling dewdrops, and the sweet odors of spring blossoms, and the glad songs of the summer-time, follow in her footsteps. Sif, as I have said, is very fair; and, at the time of my story, there was one thing of which she was a trifle vain.

She shuddered at the fantasy that in grasping the child's cold fingers her virgin hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality and could never lose the earthy taint. How many a greeting since! But as yet she was a fair young girl with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom, and, instead of "Rose" which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty her lover called her "Rosebud."

My morning walk up to the beech wood often brings me new knowledge and new glimpses of nature. This morning I saw a hummingbird taking its bath in the big dewdrops on a small ash-tree. I have seen other birds bathe in the dew or raindrops on tree foliage, but did not before know that the hummer bathed at all.