She had never known any home beyond this beautiful palace. Here, in the heart of a pastoral country, the birds sang and the flowers bloomed all through the year. It was a haven of peace, of glorious morning dawns and wind-swept evening skies. Her mother, the widowed Countess, wished to keep her among the flowers and meadows, and she had reached her seventeenth summer without ever having been in a city. She had, indeed, many learned teachers, and had heard and read of the great world which lay beyond the hills surrounding her home, but had no longing in her heart to go there. She found hosts of friends in nature--the flowers, birds, dogs, horses, golden fish in the fountain, and the sun; but most of all the wind. It seemed as though the poetic title, given to her by the good people of the village, had already exercised an influence upon her life. She loved the wind, whether he came from the icefields of the north or the sun-plains of the equator, whether his breath were redolent of western seas or of spices and Arabian perfumes. To feel his kisses on her face, to have him whirl her round in his strength, to bend before his mighty wings as did her sisters, the Windflowers, this was her delight. Her play hours were passed in dreamland peopled with her own mystical creations. What should she know of love? She was, indeed, an utter stranger to it, and yet she wrote of love, and called her hero "Terah." But the time had come when the Countess thought her daughter ought to begin to realise that the great world was not an ideal one like that of her dreams. "Mercy," she said, "why do you always write of 'Terah' as you call him? He seems to be the hero of all your stories, and he is quite impossible. You must not imagine that people in the great world are as lovely in their lives as your flowers are. 'Terah' is an ideal." "An ideal?" "Yes, there is no such man." "In what way is he not true?" asked the girl, her eyes full of wonder. "Describe him again, and I will explain." "His name speaks for him; it means that he was a breather of good like the wind, only he was always gentle. Then he drove away sorrow. He was a comforter; his face was most beautiful; he was all mercy, all love; and he had thought of others so much that self was quite dead in him. Is that impossible in that wide world yonder?" The Countess sighed as she answered, "Do not make him so handsome, Mercy, and then perhaps he will be a more probable character, the man enriched by Providence with perfect beauty such as your hero cannot help being self-imbued. It is the old story of Narcissus, every glass greets him with the picture he likes best to see; even the eyes of the woman he loves are dimmed by the reflection of his image." [Illustration]