“I am glad you told me; I like limits; I wish to know the precise moment when my rainbows will disband.  It’s very nice, meeting Fate half-way; there’s consolation in knowing that it will have as far to go as you on the return voyage.”

I smiled; a little inward ripple of gladness sent muscle-waves to my lips.  She noticed it, and her tone changed.

“I see, I see, my good little Anemone!  You don’t know how exultant it is to stand alone, above the forest of your fellows,—­to lift up your highest bough of feeling,—­to meet the Northland’s fiercest courser that thinks to lay you low.  Did you ever turn to see the expression with which the last leap of wind is met, the peculiar suavity of the bowing of the boughs, that says as plainly as ever did speaking leaves, ’You have left me myself’?  You don’t understand these things, you small wind-flower, that have grown sheltered from all storms!”

“One would think not, Miss Axtell, but”—­and I paused until she bade me “Go on.”

“Perhaps it is vanity,—­I hope not,—­but it seems to me that I have a mirror of all Nature set into the frame of my soul.  It isn’t a part of myself; it is a mental telescope, that resolves the actions of all the people around me into myriads of motives, atomies of inducement, that I see woven and webbed around them, by the sight-power given.  Besides, I am not an anemone,—­oh, no!  I am something more substantial.”

“I see, very”; and before I could divine her intent, she had lifted up my face in both her hands and held my eyes in her own intensity of gaze, as, oh, long ago!  I remember my mother to have done, when she doubted my perfect truth.

Miss Axtell was engaged in looking over old treasured letters, bits of memory-memoranda, when I arrived.  She had laid them aside to greet me, somewhat hastily, and a rustling commotion testified their feeling at their summary disposal.  Now she sat framed in by the yellow-and-white foam, that had settled to motionlessness,—­an island in the midst of waves of memory.

“Did you bring my treasures?” were the first words, after investigating my truth.

“They are safely here.”

I gave the package.

She made no mention of former occurrences.  She trusted me implicitly, with that far-deep of confidence that says, “Explanation would be useless; your spirit recognizes mine.”  She only said, drooping her regal head with the slightest dip into motion,—­

“I want to tell you a story; it is of people who are, some in heaven and some upon the earth;—­a story with which you must have something to do for me, because I cannot do it for myself.  I did not intend telling so soon, but my disbanded rainbow lies in the future.”