This little episode of illness and recovery having been thus duly celebrated, the masqueraders again forswore roofs and spent long days in distant junketing throughout the woods; the horses, too, were brought into requisition, and a flock of boats kept forever on the wing.  And meanwhile, as Helen Heath said,—­she then least of all comprehending the real drama of that summer,—­Mrs. Laudersdale had taught them how the Greek animated his statue.

“And how was that?” asked Mr. Raleigh.

“He took it out-doors, I fancy, and called the winds to curl about it.  He set its feet in morning-dew, he let in light and shade through green dancing leaves above it, he gave it glimpses of moon and star, he taught the forest-birds to chirp and whistle in its ear, and finally he steeped it in sunshine.”

“Sunshine, then, was the vivifying stroke?”

Helen nodded.

“You are mistaken,” said he; “the man never found a soul in his work till he put his own there first.”

“I always wonder,” remarked Mrs. Laudersdale here, “that every artist, in brooding over his marble, adding, touching, bringing out effects, does not end by loving it,—­absorbingly, because so beautiful to him,—­despairingly, because to him forever silent.”

“You needn’t wonder anything about it,” said Helen, mischievously.  “All that you have to do is to make the most of your sunshine.”

Mr. McLean, struck with some sudden thought, inspected the three as they stood in a blaze of the midsummer noon, then crossed over to his little wife, drew her arm in his, and held it with cautious imprisonment.  The other wife did as she was bidden, and made the most of her sunshine.

If, on first acquaintance, Mrs. Laudersdale had fascinated by her repose, her tropical languor, her latent fire, the charm was none the less, when, turning, it became one dazzle of animation, of careless freedom, of swift and easy grace.  Nor, unfamiliar as were such traits, did they seem at all foreign to her, but rather, when once donned, never to have been absent; as if, indeed, she had always been this royal creature, this woman bright and winning as some warm, rich summer’s day.  The fire that sleeps in marble never flashes and informs the whole mass so fully; if a pearl—­lazy growth and accretion of amorphous life—­should fuse and form again in sparkling crystals, the miracle would be less.  And with what complete unconsciousness had she stepped from passive to positive existence, and found this new state to be as sweet and strange as any child has found it!  Long a wife, she had known, nevertheless, nothing but quiet custom or indifference, and had dreamed of love only as the dark and silent side of the moon might dream of light.  Now she grew and unfolded in the warmth of this season, like a blossom perfumed and splendid.  Sunbeams seemed to lance themselves out of heaven and splinter about her.  She queened it over demesnes of sprite-like