It would not be perfectly correct to say that these young people lived entirely alone; and had they not been so absorbed in each other, living that life of double selfishness peculiar to lovers, they could scarcely have helped feeling a soft blue gaze fixed upon them, evening after evening, as they took their accustomed places before the hearth. On the mantel-piece which overhung the hearth was a small black marble clock, a statuette of Psyche with butterfly wings made of plaster, a little Italian shepherd of very primitively tinted clay, and a bisque vase. Now, this vase was the gem of the drawing-room. On its bosom was painted a running stream that broke into cataracts here and there over glossy brown stones. Its pitch was amazingly abrupt. It started at the brim of the vase and disappeared under it. On its banks, far away in a misty perspective of pink and violet trees, were a number of shadowy little shepherdesses, some carrying tender lambs, others dancing the minuet, but all very blithe and merry. At some distance from them, and at the very front, where the cataract roared its loudest, stood a much larger shepherdess in clear relief, thrusting herself boldly forward as though she meant to leap from the parental vase, to which she was bound only by the tip of her flowered skirt and the heel of her slippered foot. She held her crook high in the air as if to balance herself in her flight. In her other hand was a wreath of corn-flowers, with which she shaded a pair of dreamy blue eyes that gazed in perpetual wonder at the world below. Her sisters were simple little things, who were content to play with a lambkin all day long in the sun, or dance the minuet under the trees, but who had absolutely no ideas. Now, this particular little shepherdess had not only ideas, she had thoughts, and what was more, she was conscious of them. It was not to be wondered at that all things fell in love with each other in this peculiar little room; nor was it surprising that most things fell in love with the little shepherdess. The wonder was that she, on the other hand, fell in love with nothing. This superiority of thought was very isolating, and her aloneness would have been unendurable but for the gratifying nature of its cause. The clock was an unpleasant neighbor,--childless and critical, which sometimes means the same thing. Its conversation invariably took the form of a colloquy, stiff with rules, bristling with maxims; besides, having gone through life measuring out time, it had reached that stage of indiscriminate scepticism which is the greatest possible damper on the open-mindedness of others.