“She had died,” he muttered. “Little sweet Louise had pined away and become ill. One day she got wet through and developed rapid consumption. She was only eighteen--a child. They said it was consumption, but I knew better. _I_ killed her. I, the self-flaunted idealist, my eyes brimming for humanity, had neglected every one around me. I only realised it then. She had known it all the while, because love was a far holier and greater thing to her than it was to me. I thought because I had wanted to pour out my heart’s blood at her feet that therefore my love was not selfish, but real, divine! Ah, what did I know about love! I went to the churchyard and saw the mounded grave with a simple stone at the head, and it seemed to me that she was near, wearing the print frock and standing among the buttercups that reflected a gold vapour about her, her eyes dark with a shadow. The maiden eyes, the eyes soft with love, and yet so sad, regarded me, and so sharp was the impression of her standing there that I could hear her pleading, ‘Julien, for my sake now, Julien!’ In the churchyard I stood alone, looking at her, while in an orchard near the blossom was shaken by the fluttering of goldfinches. Spring was in the hearts of the wild birds I loved, but my heart was dead. What was there left? To recreate that love and cruelty, and write out of my sorrow and folly! Greater than all written art is life and happiness: a simple living with a beloved and the joy of children’s young voices. By the grassy mound I stayed with the shadows. My heart was broken, the more irretrievably because I had broken it myself. Remorse, remorse!” Memory ceased. Again the dry whisper of the leaf overbore the wintry solitude and song-silence in that little wood in Whitefoot Lane, where the bark of the trees was stripped, and all undergrowth was trampled down. The green woodpeckers would laugh no more in spring: only a few poor wind-flowers and bluebells would tell of past loveliness. The pale visitant was gone, and with no sound of footfall. The leaf spun insistently as the wind passed wearily onwards, and beside me the long green grasses held their drops of light-laden water, nor was there any mark as of feet having pressed there, nor any trail leading away. With a vague mournfulness I turned and went along the miry path to the roadway, where a tattered fence gaped forlornly. The land would be sold, the trees cut down, and useful houses erected. Perhaps the spirit of the dead haunted that wilderness of torn branches and charred fire-circles, to find rest only where all was changed. Never again would I go back among those poor trees, where in the cruel days of youth sweet hopes had been crushed like a wood-anemone under careless and unknowing feet. PROSERPINE’S MESSAGE (_Written during the spring-like days of October, 1921, when the prolonged drought had been broken by the rains following the equinoctial gales._)