This sense of life unfolding like a normal flower and becoming the perfection of a rose was too much for the grateful heart to contemplate at its ease; some great demonstration towards God must follow on such contemplation. And Chloris in her security putting it off until bedtime, sat reading about the discipline of the will, the happy blood all the while keeping up in her veins a pleasant undercurrent babbling of other matters. Two hours more and the summer sun would be reaching its glorious haven, the cool flow in with the darkness, and time take up again that sweet scanning of the lines of her idyl.... After reading the same passage some seven times, Chloris let her book lie a moment in her lap. How marvellous, how simple, how natural, how exquisite! Truly like the coming up of a flower. First, they were children together, fair-dealing, unquarrelsome playmates; then, schoolboy and schoolgirl, always good unsentimental friends; and finally, time, passing over them, slowly turned them to lovers; for this, no question, was whither they were tending: quiet, undemonstrative, unjealous, faithful, devoted lovers, presently married people, and by and by, God pleasing, tenants of one same grave. And this sweetness in the heart, this best of all earthly goods, God granted it to the humblest of his creatures! Why, then, were so many dissatisfied with this dear earth? Why were some on it interested in the discipline of the will? Ah, this summer, so endearingly begun, to be ended so--and Chloris, in a confusion of bliss, almost as if to give herself a countenance towards herself, took up her book again, finding moonlight and wild azaleas and whippoorwills between the lines, a dappled, singing shingle, a golden beach, velvet winds from over sea. The sunshine crept off the window-square; a sadness instantly invaded the room; Chloris jumped up to open the blinds. Time to dress! Then she did her hair as painstakingly as ably, put on a just-ironed white gown with a violet figure, and stood at the glass weighing the question of a velvet band around the neck. A fateful sound already was dawning on the distance outside, but she did not as yet hear it. Too hot! She tossed the velvet ribbon in the top bureau-drawer so unconcernedly as if not, at that moment, the Parcæ had been tangling the skein of her life, and wondered idly if any one describing her would call her pretty. She thought, in conscience, not; but of a charming appearance, she hoped any one would. At this point penetrated to her brain a sound of voices out on the road beyond the lawn and the hedge. She looked between the curtains.