“I wish you would draw.  Mrs. Laudersdale out.”

At this point Mrs. Laudersdale fell out; but, without otherwise stirring from his position than by moving an apparently careless arm, Mr. Raleigh caught and restored her to her balance, as lightly as if he had brushed a floating gossamer from the air to his finger.  For the first time, perhaps, in her life, a carnation blossomed an instant in her cheek, then all was as before,—­only two of the party felt on that instant that in some mysterious manner their relations with each other were entirely changed.

“But what is it that you do with yourself?” persisted Helen.  “Tell us, that we may do likewise.”

“Will you come and see?” he asked,—­his eyes, however, on Mrs. Laudersdale.

“Will you come in away from the lake to the brooks, and hang among the alders and angle, dreaming, all day long?  Or will you rise at dead of night and go out on the lake with me and watch field after field of white lilies flash open as the sun touches them with his spear?  Or will you lie during still noons up among the farmers’ fields where myriad bandrol corn-poppies flaunt over your head, and stain your finger-tips with the red berries that hang like globes of light in the palace-gardens of mites and midges, soaking yourself in hot sunshine and south-winds and heavy aromatic earth-scents?”

“Come!” said Mrs. Laudersdale, rising earnestly, like one in an eager dream.

“It is plain that you are in training for a poet,” said Helen Heath, laughing, to Mr. Raleigh.  “Well, when will you take us?  Are the lilies in bloom?  Shall we go to-morrow morning?”

“I don’t know that I shall take you at all, Miss Helen;—­river-lilies might suit you best; but these queens of the lakes, the great, calm pond-lilies, creatures of quiet and white radiance,—­I have seen only one head that possessed enough of the genuine East-Indian repose to be crowned with them.”

“You like repose,” said Mrs. Laudersdale.  “But what is it?”

“Repose is strength,—­life that develops from within, and feels itself and has no need of effort.  Repose is inherent security.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Helen.  “Article first in a new dictionary,—­encyclopedia, I should say.  You worship, but you don’t possess your god, for you look at this moment like a shaft in the bow; and here comes an archer to give it flight.”

“Where are you going, Kate?” said her cousin.

“To pick strawberries in the garden.  Want to come?”

The three could do no better than accept her invitation.  The good ladies might stare as they could after Mrs. Laudersdale, and wonder what sudden sprite had possessed her, since for neither man nor woman of the numerous party had she hitherto condescended to lift an unwonted eyelid; what they would have said to have seen her plunged in a strawberry-bed, gathering handfuls and raining them drop by drop into Helen Heath’s