death, she had long been accustomed to see flowers wither and die their beautiful death of nature. “And perhaps,” she added, after a reflective pause, “as I have often known them to retain their delicious odour even after they were faded, perhaps _what thinks_ may live too after the form has faded, and that is a thought of joy.” Of passion, she said she knew nothing, and could propose no remedy for an evil she was unconscious of. She had seen flowers fade with the season, but could not imagine why the flower should destroy itself. “But did you never trace a worm in the flower?” said the stranger, with the sophistry of corruption. “Yes,” answered Immalee, “but the worm was not the native of the flower; its own leaves never could have hurt it.” This led to a discussion, which Immalee’s impregnable innocence, though combined with ardent curiosity and quick apprehension, rendered perfectly harmless to her. Her playful and desultory answers,--her restless eccentricity of imagination,--her keen and piercing, though ill-poised intellectual weapons,--and, above all, her instinctive and unfailing _tact_ in matters of right and wrong, formed altogether an array that discomfited and baffled the tempter more than if he had been compelled to encounter half the _wranglers_ of the European academies of that day. In the logic of the schools he was well-versed, but in this logic of the heart and of nature, he was “ignorance itself.” It is said, that the “awless lion” crouches before “a maid in the pride of her purity.” The tempter was departing gloomily, when he saw tears start from the bright eyes of Immalee, and caught a wild and dark omen from her innocent grief. “And you weep, Immalee?” “Yes,” said the beautiful being, “I always weep when I see the sun set in clouds; and will you, the sun of my heart, set in darkness too? and will you not rise again? will you not?” and, with the graceful confidence of pure innocence, she pressed her red delicious lip to his hand as she spoke. “Will you not? I shall never love my roses and peacocks if you do not return, for they cannot speak to me as you do, nor can I give them one thought, but you can give me many. Oh, I would like to have many thoughts about _the world that suffers_, from which you came; and I believe you came from it, for, till I saw you, I never felt a pain that was not pleasure; but now, it is all pain when I think you will not return.”--“I will return,” said the stranger, “beautiful Immalee, and will shew you, at my return, a glimpse of that world from which I come, and in which you will soon be an inmate.”--“But shall I see you there,” said Immalee, “otherwise how shall I _talk thoughts_?”--“Oh yes,--oh certainly.”--“But why do you repeat the same words twice; _your once_ would have been enough.”--“Well then, yes.”--“Then take this rose from me, and let us inhale its odour together, as I say to my friend in the fountain, when I bend to kiss