"The air is good enough. The grass is certainly green. But oh, the people are green too! But now you are here, we will change all this, dear. What a holiday! You will inspire us. We will rise up, and look into our closets, and fetch out wherewith to make a good impression on the stranger. You bring the very air of civilization with you in your clothes and hair. Where did you get it, Chlo--the general air, you know? How ravishingly you do your hair! And that little hat! Now, who in the world but you would have a hat like that? Oh, you rare darling! Do you know you are greatly improved? You are thinner, but it suits you. You always were a beauty, you know. Yes, you were! But you have acquired so much besides--such an interesting air--yes, you have!--so much expression. No one could see you without--gospel truth, Chlo! But, yes--I will--I will hold my tongue. Did you bring your music at least, for there is a piano, such as it is. Thank Heaven! You shall make their capture with song. They shall grovel. You know, dear, I am not really so silly as I seem; your arriving has turned my head. I always did adore you, but it is even better than I remembered." Chloris that night, alone at last, tried to readjust herself, to get back through this new experience her self of yesterday. The morning of her starting from home, but sixteen hours removed, seemed withdrawn into a much remoter past; a screen of glittering, crumbling, changing color was arisen between herself and it. She interrogated her breast curiously for that pain lately grown so familiar, forgotten for the first time only in these last hours; her breast did not answer by at once producing it. She goaded it tentatively with a sharp memory or two; it responded sluggishly--a divinely restful torpor was possessing it. She knelt by the window, and looked out at the still, strong, black mountains; instinctively she wafted profound thanks to their rude majesties. Far, far away in her dream at this moment, in an infinitely small, sun-warmed, murmuring plain, moved two tiny figures: the great Damon, who erewhile filled the entire horizon of her life, and the great Cytherea, who interposed her fair shape between her and the sun, shutting off the light of life--two tiny black figures, in a far-off, sunshiny place it fatigued her to think of. Only the mountains were big and important; and this cool, rough bedchamber was fifteen by twelve; only Fidele and herself and the people seen for the first time this evening were life-size and real. Stretching her tired limbs in the bed, that had nothing to-night in common with the rack, feeling natural sleep creep over her as it had long not done, she remembered with a vague joy that she was young; she divined a time ahead--perhaps not so far ahead either--when life would become possible again.