The perfumed wind blew softly over the singer, like a placid breath; the sense of gathering evening hung above him; he lay upon the billowy hay as if it were a cloud; he was a voluptuary in his pleasures; well for him if they were always as innocent. A young girl approached the singer, swinging her hat as she came, and radiant in the low sunshine. She was named Orient,--either because she seemed, with her golden locks, her fresh fair tints, like an impersonation of morning and the East, or because when she was born hope’s day-star rose again in her mother’s forlorn heart. Such a lovely yet half-fantastic creature was she, that you hardly believed in her existence when away from her. “What are you looking for, Orient?” said the lounger. “The fountain of youth,” answered her silvery tones. “It should be somewhere in this happy valley.” “You do not need it,” he replied after a lingering glance. She stooped and extricated a long sweetbrier bough from the hay with which it had been bent but not cut down, and twisted it, still blossoming, round and round her head till it made a fragrant diadem of rosy stars. “Do not,” said Reymund. “Take it off; or I shall have to do as Voltaire did: erect my long, thin body and stand before you like a point of admiration!” Orient did not reply; and, fulfilling his threat, he went on by her side to the old farm-house that had been turned into a summer hostelry for guests. More stars were beginning to steal forth in the tender firmament; the breeze blew down more freshly from the hills and brought the big dews and scattered starbeams with it; music was hushed, and all the world was still. It was summer evening, yet an unreal kind of summer, as summer might be in a distant dream, blown over by cool, awakening winds. Now and then Orient stopped to pick up a great butterfly that had fallen benumbed from its perch and lay it gently to rest among the leaves, without brushing a speck of dust from its freckled wings; after that her fingers worked in a vine by the way, and she pulled aside a tendril that kept a sleepy flower from shutting up its petals. As she did so, a little mother-bird upon her eggs stirred and briefly twittered out her secret to Orient’s ear. Reymund, who loitered in waiting for her, thought she seemed, as much as any of them, like a flower, a moth, a bird herself, a beautiful and almost dumb existence of nature. He was not a man easily intimidated, or of unvaried experience; but the thin atmosphere of awe about this girl was something he had never penetrated; the ease with which he met another, toward her became impertinence; gay and careless with many, he felt that she was something apart, sacred as a passion-flower; he scarcely dared approach her lightly; when he spoke to her he crossed himself in his heart.