They humored this one of her caprices, as they had others. She was full of fancies, some odd, some ghastly, some graceful. Even practical May yielded obedience to the mandate, and, laying her head against the bole of the tree, met the bright eye of the mother robin peering over the edge of her nest with what May chose to interpret as a wink of intelligent amusement. “She asked me as plainly as dumb show could ask, who would provide three meals a day for the happy exclusives, and, when I alluded to breadfruit trees and beefsteak geraniums, wanted to know where ovens and gridirons would come from,” said May afterward; “That formed the basis of _my_ five-minute reverie.” My soul, to-day, Is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian bay; My winged boat, A bird afloat, Swims ’round the purple peaks remote. So runs the poem, between the lines of which might be written the exultant, “_Absent from the body!_” Hester’s soul had the poet’s power of “drifting” into absolute idealization. She was used to building with dream stuff. In the time she had allotted, she lived out a lifetime, to tell of which would require hours and many pages. That she paid for the wide sweep into the remote and the never-to-be, by reaction bitterer than death, never dissuaded her from other voyages of the “winged boat.” For perhaps sixty seconds Hetty, sitting upon the turf by the recumbent Thor, and idly pulling his shaggy hair, reflected regretfully upon this certain reflex action; then, as if uttered in her ear, recurred the words: “Where we four might paint, and talk, and _live_ forever!” “We four!” Involuntarily, her eye sped from one to another of the group; from May’s placid visage and smile upraised to the robin’s nest, to the face framed about by pale blue cushions—colorless as wax, the pain lines effaced by the sweet exaltation oftenest seen upon the forehead and mouth of a dead child—consciousness, rising into majesty, of having compassed all that is given to the human creature to know, the full possession of a happy secret to be shared with none who still bear the weight of mortality. Hetty’s heart slackened its beat while she gazed upon the motionless features. Her “child” was, for the time, rapt beyond her reach. Yet it was only “make believe” after all, that snared her into temporary bliss! Before the pang of the thought got firm hold of her she met March Gilchrist’s eyes, full, and fixed upon hers.