"What, dear,--a white hair? Oh, I saw several lately. How did it end? Oh, he said that he was going away to glean material for a new book; that he would burn my letters,--it was safer and wiser to burn letters. No, I did not ask him; he volunteered it. He asked me, did I not think so? I said yes. But is it not marvellous how dazzlingly swift our thoughts can travel, like light? While I was saying, 'Yes, one often regretted not having burned letters; receipts, receipts for bills, were really the only things of importance to keep,' I was thinking and crying inwardly over my letters. Such letters!--one only writes once like that, I think. All the perfume of the flowers I ever smelt, all the sun-glints on hill and sea, all the strains of music and light and love I had garnered from the glad, fresh, young years when I tossed cowslip balls in the meadows, were crystallized into love-words in those letters of mine. It seemed to me often that the words burnt with a white flame as I wrote them, and I was shy when I saw them written; and he said, 'I shall burn them!' much as you might say, 'I shall take the trimming off that last summer hat of mine.' I did not like to think of his burning them, perhaps with his old washing-bills. Do you know, if I had a finger or toe cut off, I wouldn't like them to take it away; I'd like to bury it. A sort of feel, I suppose. "Well, we said good-by! I felt as if I had a sponge with a lot of holes in it, instead of a heart, and that all the feeling had oozed away through them. He was glad to go, I think; he felt himself a brute I dare say, yet how could he help it? * * * * * "Were you ever at the Scandinavian church in the Docks? I went one Sunday after I came back. I like those blue-eyed, sea-faring folk; and the priest wears a black gown and stiff ruff, like Luther of mixed renown. An apple-tree outside the open door was struggling to open its delicate pink blossoms; each petal had a tinge of soot,--it reminded me of the pretty cheeks of a grimy maid-of-all-work. I sat still; a sunbeam came in and pierced Judas's heart, as he sat at his section of the Last Supper table, and it wrapped me up in a sun haze, so that all was misty around me. The sermon only struck my ear with a soothing, drowsy roll, something like the wave-note of the incurling sea in the Mediterranean,--a legato accompaniment to my thoughts; and I had a grand burial all by myself. I dug a deep grave, and laid all my dreams and foolish wishes and sweet hopes in it. A puff of wind rustled through the rigging of the ships, and set the flags with their yellow cross fluttering, and scattered a few of the tender blooms over it, and--ah, well! it seems hard to realize now. Spring has gone! "Do you really think that crinolines will be worn?" THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF.