Suddenly a spell was woven round me; a spell as of moonbeams. I was in a wood of olive trees. Their sharp, narrow leaves, of a sheen like frosted silver, pointed with rigid grace into the luminous grey of the sky. No shadow, no darker spot of black or green fruit broke the wondrous diffused splendour. The very branches, as they spread and bent outwards from the low trunks, had softened the harshness of their scaly bark and were as softly radiant as the foliage and the sky above them. Only the trunks and the under-sides of the branches were in shadow; rugged and brown, they were like a rough shell which had opened to give life to an Aphrodite of new and chastened beauty. No flowers jarred with bright tints the harmonious hush of colour; but here and there delicate campions raised slender stems that bent with the weight of grey-green calyx and pallid, wide-eyed blossom. And I walked, in the exquisite suavity of the wood. Surely, I thought, the moonbeams have become tangible. Surely I am in an enchanted land and should meet its mistress; a maiden slim and grave, with wealth of olive-black hair, with deep dark eyes, with clinging gown of grey girdled with a zone of cold blue-green. How sweet to stay here for ever with soul attuned to the melody that mutely breathes from the living silver of boughs and leaves, and falls graciously from the pearl-like sky. But onward and ever onward must I go; and the olives left me as the cypresses had done. * * * * * They left me at the edge of the highway; and I passed out again into the glare of the sunshine, the gaze of the passers, the laughter, the bustle, the pushing, on the parched and burning road. And behold! a change had come over my soul. The stoicism of the cypresses, the calm of the toilers, the suave quiet strength of that harmonious olive wood—these things had permeated the fibres of my being. The indifference of the passers-by found no way open to my heart; the unheeding joy of trees and flowers no longer jarred me. I was clothed upon with a vesture woven of the enduring calm that broods ever at the unchanging heart of Nature; like armour it encompassed me about, and I possessed my soul in peace. LOVELORNNESS AFTER THE MANNER OF THE EDDA BALDUR was once obliged to go away out of Asgard and leave Nanna all alone. So Nanna was very sad. She knew that no one would hurt her Baldur, but still it was to her as though he had been swallowed up by the mists of Niflheim, and as though she would never see him again. So she went to the Norns who dwell by the tree Ygdrasil, and she said:— NANNA: “Tell me, oh Norns, who know all things. What can the body do, when the soul has left it?” NORN: “The body when the soul has left it can do nothing; it is lifeless and inert, and turns to dust.” NANNA: “Tell me, oh Norns, who know all things. What can the thoughts do, when the master-brain has left them?”