people who lived in her street. There was romance in the fact of difference of language and of climate, of mere physical distance, romance in the study of their tradition and literature, and above all, passionate interest in the quest for the spirit of revolt wherever it might be.
She pictured herself on a village green near a pond. Night was falling, but the crowd of men and women that had left their huts and fields to hear her message, and to tell her of their condition, did not think of leaving. The women held sick and starved babies in their arms, and tried to still them at their shrivelled breasts. And when it was over, and she had been made to enter and partake of their bread and salt, she sat with them as a long-lost sister might, talking intimately and lovingly, and being loved in turn. Something that had burned in her heart many years had there been expressed, and Violette fancied herself returning from this voyage with memories that would last her forever,—memories of people as they live their pitifully short day under the sun and stars, memories of colossal suflPering in narrow existences. Oh, they were waiting, these people she could call out of their homes and their fields—they were waiting, and she was coming.
She pictured her travels otherwise too— among those who had found themselves after having been lost, or among joyous, free spirits who knew why they lived, or, not knowing, were too happy to ask. She pictured herself going far and wide, without haste, at home everywhere, entering into converse with all, making unforgettable friends, expanding in proportion as she conquered space, growing even as her horizon grew.
She pictured travel apart from people— that, too, was possible—mountains whose snows grew red as blood dyed by the evening sun-glow, whose lakes were black and cold, whose valleys smiled, ran with rivulets and glistened with water-falls.
She pictured the sea, which she had never known, heard its voice in her mind, stood wide-eyed on its shore and said that at last she knew what drama wasl The sea could teach her more of tragedy than Pere La- chaise, it laughed where the other dropped silent tears of pity—it laughed and mocked, and yet inspired.
She was on the ocean. White birds, hundreds of miles from the banks, circled close to the water and seemed at times to be pulled below by the waves. They rested a little, floating in the air with wings stiffened. They, too, called to her strongly.
Youth
Youth
AH, swaying grain in the broad fields, studded with cornflowers and flaming poppies—Violette has borrowed of your grace, Violette is singing down the long furrows, looking with glad eyes to the right and left, and up at the clear sky. Violette is harbouring an hour to be remembered in chill, grey winters, long after, when her heart gets a little sedate and numb after the tumult of the full years. Violette is becoming acquainted with the earth as she walks in the fields and along the river banks. She begins to understand why it is called Mother, this tender earth. It has an almost simple loveliness at times, but at night when the stars flash all around it, it takes on a limitless grandeur.
Is it this that keeps you happy, Violette?
This, that the earth is beautiful, the morning alluring? Do bright clouds and the blue river winding among tree-clad banks, and flower-studded grain fields inspire you with the throbbing happiness you now feel, with the winged thoughts that carry you to the unbounded future?
No, not these alone,—the earth and its beauty are but the reflex and the expression of life itself, that force which is behind all the forces of existence. Its beauty is but a testimony of the genius of that which is behind it all, the nature which has breathed spirit into it and a meaning beyond any meaning, and a purpose so vital as to seem purposeless and accidental. Ah, the romance of the beautiful earth cried Violette,—upon whose bosom our Uves begin, where also we end! Ah, the surpassing, the exquisite beauty of this earth.
Speak softly, O heart, lest sorrow awake! Hush your exultation, O soul! Dream, but utter no word—lest sorrow fiwake! For the heart may not bear for long unbroken happiness. The sky becomes overcast, the smiling prospect grows dim; suddenly something recalls the end of all things, the end that comes so soon, that waits always at the close of the brief day, the fleeting moment which is human existence.
Steep your heart in the gentle beauties of this morning, Violette, drown your eyes in this freshness, breathe deep of this air, perfumed by flowers and new-mown grass, won-drously broken by humming of insects and whirring wings of birds, fling out your arms to the morning as it greets you—in this way will you gather strength for the work which seeks you out of the world's terrible need. In this way will you gird up the years before you with memories of happiness that shall become weapons; in this way will you lift your spirit to a deeper faith, an adoration of life which not all the combined foes of the world could quell. Embrace the wonders of this morning, Violette, as you have that of a hundred others since you were a child, as you will again and again before night folds you in her arms forever, but sing not your joy too loudly, name not the beauties as they flood your being, vaunt not your riches, lest sorrow awake—that sorrow of which you were never free, which will not free you before it frees the last of your fellowmen.
I. Gervais
IT was more like a thin mist than rain, and the air was warm. Violette had visited all her old haunts. It was on her part a kind of farewell, for she felt that after to-morrow, when she would in reality have begun her career, she would never again be the same. She was on the threshold of a new epoch. She had left the house depressed, possibly through nervousness at what was before her, and had kissed her grandfather tenderly and hovered over him so long before leaving that he laughed at her and asked if she meant to return.
She was now walking rapidly towards home because evening had come and the lamps were lit on the bridges. She fancied their red reflection was the blood of suicides, those pitiful hosts who to-day find a welcome only in the sombre depths of the river.
She looked up and met the eyes of a man standing on the quay. She stopped. Was it her fancy brooding upon violent death that invested his face with tragic purpose? His pale, drawn features bore a melancholy so settled that Violette felt she had no words to utter before such grief.
But she stood spellbound, motionless, and insistent.
Suddenly she said, 'I do not want you to die.'
'Why? Why?' he murmured.
They remembered afterwards that she had taken his hands, and that slowly they had moved away. Her human presence had penetrated the isolation of his soul. Together they went to the home where her grandfather waited.
Violette forgot her art, her grandfather, her vision of the better world that lay like a flower on her soul. With all the impetuosity of her youth she tried to reach Gervais. For she took him, and his sorrow, his memories, the broken promise of his genius, his shaken faith. She loved him.
How did it begin? Not because of anything that she could name or otherwise express, did this feeling rise in her at his presence, or at the mere thought of him. He haunted her. He was practically the first man she had ever met in her youth, the first man of her own generation, and from the first, she told herself, she had loved him. But why? How? Why must it be he, of the millions and millions of people in the world, and when she looked at him she sometimes asked herself, how can it be he? Surely, off in the future was another—some one else, some one nearer, some one far more like herself. This was just a trick of the Spring, a trick of the boimty of youth, to seize upon this man and say that it was he!
If Gervais did not love her, then there might in the future be some one else whom she would love and by whom she would be loved. She admitted it, and yet—it had no meaning for her. She resented the thought of such
