her pen and wrote Ein Blatt ... aus ... Ein Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen ... that thing they had begun last Saturday afternoon and gone on and on with until she had hated the sound of the words. How did it go on? "Ein Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen," she breathed in a half whisper. Minna heard--and without looking up from her writing quietly repeated the verse. Her voice rose and trembled slightly on the last line. "Oh, chuck it, Minna," groaned Bertha Martin. "Tchookitt," repeated Minna absently, and went on with her writing. Miriam was scribbling down the words as quickly as she could-- "Ein Blatt aus sommerlichen Tagen Ich nahm es so im Wandern mit Auf dass es einst mir möge sagen Wie laut die Nachtigall geschlagen Wie grün der Wald den ich--durchtritt--" durchtritt--durchschritt--she was not sure. It was perfectly lovely--she read it through translating stumblingly-- "A leaf from summery days I took it with me on my way, So that it might remind me How loud the nightingale had sung, How green the wood I had passed through." With a pang she felt it was true that summer ended in dead leaves. But she had no leaf, nothing to remind her of her summer days. They were all past and she had nothing--not the smallest thing. The two little bunches of flowers she had put away in her desk had all crumbled together, and she could not tell which was which.... There was nothing else--but the things she had told Eve--and perhaps Eve had forgotten ... there was nothing. There were the names in her birthday book! She had forgotten them. She would look at them. She flushed. She would look at them to-morrow, sometime when Mademoiselle was not there.... The room was waking up from its letter-writing. People were moving about. She would not write to-day. It was not worth while beginning. She took a fresh sheet of note-paper and copied her verse, spacing it carefully with a wide margin all round so that it came exactly in the middle of the page. It would soon be tea-time. "Wie grün der Wald." She remembered one wood--the only one she could remember--there were no woods at Barnes or at the seaside--only that wood, at the very beginning, someone carrying Harriett--and green green, the brightest she had ever seen, and anemones everywhere, she could see them distinctly at this moment--she wanted to put her face down into the green among the anemones. She could not remember how she got there or the going home, but just standing there--the green and the flowers and something in her ear buzzing and frightening her and making her cry, and somebody poking a large finger into the buzzing ear and making it very hot and sore. The afternoon sitting had broken up. The table was empty.