He could not have told you. In his heart, he knew that a thorough digest of the Wills and Orders of the Orphans' Court of any county must always rank as a useful and creditable performance; but, from without, the sounds and odors of Spring were calling to him, luring him, wringing his very heart, bidding him come forth into the open and crack a jest or two before he died, and stare at the girls a little before the match had flickered out. * * * * * At this time he heard a moaning noise. The colonel gave a shrug, sighed, and ascended to his sister's bedroom. He knew that Agatha must be ill; and that there is no more efficient quietus to wildish meditations than the heating of hot-water bottles and the administration of hypnotics he had long ago discovered. PART TWO - RENASCENCE "As one imprisoned that hath lain alone And dreamed of sunlight where no vagrant gleam Of sunlight pierces, being freed, must deem This too but dreaming, and must dread the sun Whose glory dazzles,--even as such-an-one Am I whose longing was but now supreme For this high hour, and, now it strikes, esteem I do but dream long dreamed-of goals are won. "Phyllis, I am not worthy of thy love. I pray thee let no kindly word be said Of me at all, for in the train thereof, Whenas yet-parted lips, sigh-visited, End speech and wait, mine when I will to move, Such joy awakens that I grow afraid." THOMAS ROWLAND. _Triumphs of Phyllis_. I They passed with incredible celerity, those next ten days--those strange, delicious, topsy-turvy days. To Rudolph Musgrave it seemed afterward that he had dreamed them away in some vague Lotus Land--in a delectable country where, he remembered, there were always purple eyes that mocked you, and red lips that coaxed you now, and now cast gibes at you. You felt, for the most part of your stay in this country, flushed and hot and uncomfortable and unbelievably awkward, and you were mercilessly bedeviled there; but not for all the accumulated wealth of Samarkand and Ind and Ophir would you have had it otherwise. Ah, no, not otherwise in the least trifle. For now uplifted to a rosy zone of acquiescence, you partook incuriously at table of nectar and ambrosia, and noted abroad, without any surprise, that you trod upon a more verdant grass than usual, and that someone had polished up the sun a bit; and, in fine, you snatched a fearful joy from the performance of the most trivial functions of life.