“When I first beheld you in the orchard, I was sorry that I might have to die, Pomona, because you were in life. You carried me in your arms and kept my soul from passing, by the touch of your lips. When the fever burned me you brought me coolness--you lifted me and gave me breath. All night you held me. Patient, strong Pomona! You bore with all my humors. You came to me in the night from your sleep, all in white, like an angel, your bare feet on the boards. Oh, my gentle nurse, my humble love, my mate, my wife!” She raised her head to gaze at him. Yet she took the wonder like a child, not disclaiming, not questioning. “Oh!” she said, with a deep, soft sigh. He fondly pushed the tangled hair from her brow. “And shall a man make shift with sham and hollow artifice when he can possess truth itself? They put paint on your cheeks, my Pomona, and tricked you out in gauds, and behold, I saw how great was the true woman beside the painted doll!” He kissed her lips, and then he cried: “Oh, golden apple, how is the taste of thee sweet and pure!” And, after a silence, he said to her, faintly, for he was still weak for such rapture: “Lift me, my love, and let me lie a while against your woman’s heart, for never have I drawn such sweet breath as in your arms.” THE MASTER OF THE DIDO BY ELIZABETH DUER [Illustration] A certain great corporation was digging up New York and setting microbes loose in quarters too aristocratic to suffer inconvenience with patience, and so there were a general boarding up of front doors and windows, a rush to Europe or to watering places; and my elders, who were just recovering from the grip, decided that Southstrand in the month of May was preferable to pneumonia in town. Therefore I--Kate Russell--was sent on ahead to open my mother’s cottage at that gay little resort, in spite of my uncle Barton Hay’s warnings against such an unchaperoned proceeding, and mamma’s distrust of my housekeeping powers. She was not strong enough to undertake it herself, but to intrust the sacred rites of cleaning and unpacking to the supervision of a girl of twenty seemed to her abnormal; while uncle Barton felt that no unmarried woman should be given such liberty. My uncle had condescended to live with us since my father’s death, and, while he was too set in his ways to do anything for anybody, we were much attached to him, and let him bully us, as most women do the one man in the house. “Julia,” he said, addressing my mother, “you are surely not going to send Kate off alone to that jumping-off place, Southstrand! If some young fellow elopes with her, you’ll have yourself to thank.” “This is the twentieth century, Barton,” said mamma, laughing; “young women do not elope nowadays. They may defy parents and divorce husbands, but they don’t elope.”