By Morton Fullerton DEEPEST and keenest of our time who pace The variant by-paths of the uncertain heart In undiscerned mysterious ways apart, Thou huntest on the Assyrian monster’s trace: That sweeping-pinioned Thing--with human face, Poor Man, with wings hoof-weighted lest they start To try the breeze above this human mart, In heights pre-occupied of a god-like race. Among the stammering sophists of the age Thy words are absolute, thy vision true; No hand but thine is found to fit the gage The Titan, Shakespeare, to a whole world threw. Till thou hadst boldly to his challenge sprung, No rival had he in our English tongue. A Sunset By William Hyde [Illustration] Jeanne-Marie By Leila Macdonald I JEANNE-MARIE lived alone in the white cottage at the far end of the village street. It was a long narrow street of tall houses, stretching each side of the white shining road, for two hundred yards or more. A street that was cool and shadeful even in the shadeless summer days, when the sun burned most hotly, when the broad roads dazzled between their avenues of plane-tree and poplar, and the mountains disappeared from the horizon in the blue haze of heat. From her little garden Jeanne-Marie liked to look at the mountains each morning, and, when for two or three days following they were not to be seen, she would shake her head reproachfully, as at the failing of old friends. “My boys, Jeanne-Marie is only thirty-seven,” Bourdet the innkeeper said to his companions, as they sat, one May afternoon, smoking under the chestnut-trees in front of the café. They all looked up as he spoke, and watched Jeanne-Marie, as she walked slowly past them to her cottage. “Bourdet has been paying court,” said Leguillon, the fat, red-faced butcher, with a chuckle, as he puffed at his long pipe. “You see, he is anxious we should think her of an age suitable, before he tells us the betrothals are arranged.” “For my part I should give many congratulations,” said the village postman and tobacconist, gruffly. “Jeanne-Marie is worth any of our girls of the village, with their bright dresses and silly giggles.” Bourdet laughed. “You shall come to the wedding, my friends,” he said, with a wink and a nod of the head to the retreating figure; “and since our friend Minaud there finds the girls so distasteful, he shall wait till our babies are old enough, and be betrothed to one of them.” The postmaster laughed with the rest. “But seriously,” he said, “Bourdet will pardon me if I tell him our Jeanne-Marie is a good deal past the thirties.”