“In a picture, yes.  Necessary for this.  But, my dear Miss Willoughby, you convince me that the Amber Witch founded your family,” he said, having listened with an amused face.  “Loveliest amber that ever the sorrowing sea-birds have wept,” he hummed.  “There! isn’t that kind of stuff enough to make a man detest it?”

“Yes.”

“And you are quite as bad in another way.”

“Oh!”

“Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold also that furious epoch where rioted all monsters and poisons,—­where death fecundated and life destroyed,—­where superabundance demanded such existences, no souls, but fiercest animal fire;—­just for that I hate it.”

“Why, then, is it fitted for me?”

He laughed again, but replied,—­“The hues harmonize,—­the substances; you both are accidents; it suits your beauty.”

So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all.

“You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am a symbol of its period.  If there had been women then, they would have been like me,—­a great creature without a soul, a”——­

“Pray, don’t finish the sentence.  I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me.  Yea, you have beauty, after all,” turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—­“beauty, after all, as you didn’t say just now.—­Mr. Willoughby is in the garden.  I must go before he comes in, or he’ll make me stay.  There are some to whom you can’t say, No.”

He stopped a minute, and now, without looking,—­indeed, he looked everywhere but at me, while we talked,—­made a bow as if just seating me from a waltz, and, with his eyes and his smile on Louise all the way down the room, went out.  Did you ever know such insolence?

[To be continued.]

SONG OF NATURE.

  Mine are the night and morning,
  The pits of air, the gulf of space,
  The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
  The innumerable days.

  I hide in the blinding glory,
  I lurk in the pealing song,
  I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
  In death, new-born and strong.

  No numbers have counted my tallies,
  No tribes my house can fill,
  I sit by the shining Fount of life,
  And pour the deluge still.

  And ever by delicate powers
  Gathering along the centuries
  From race on race the fairest flowers,
  My wreath shall nothing miss.

  And many a thousand summers
  My apples ripened well,
  And light from meliorating stars
  With firmer glory fell.

  I wrote the past in characters
  Of rock and fire the scroll,
  The building in the coral sea,
  The planting of the coal.

  And thefts from satellites and rings
  And broken stars I drew,
  And out of spent and aged things
  I formed the world anew.