flowers, and the same moths whirred duskily round our gathered roses or darted daringly into our faces.  We were like the flowers and the grass and the blackberry and blackthorn.  The night which had overtaken them and put them to sleep had settled upon us also, and the things of the night came out securely at our feet.  For a moment, a sport of habit had betrayed us to the old Eden habits, had taken us a step into a forgotten harmony.  But below the surface the old fought secretly with the new, that old that seems so much the newest of the new, that new that really is so old and stale.  The new must have won, and in me first, for I rose suddenly, brusquely, as if somehow I felt I had unawares been acting unaccountably foolishly.  I looked at my companion; the mood was still upon her, and I believe she might easily have slumbered on into the night, but as she saw me rise, the new in her gained reinforcement, and she too rose in a sort of mild surprise.  Now I think I might have left her there to awaken late in the night, a new Titania with the moonbeams coming through the forest branches to her.

I awakened her.  I think she has often been awakened since then, but indeed it is seldom now that she is allowed to slip into such slumber.  We walked home and I said some poems on the way; she heard.  I think she heard in the same way as a flower feels the touch of a bee.  No words had she, no poetry of words to give back.  She had not awakened to articulateness.  She had no thoughts; she breathed out beauty.  She understood no thoughts; she breathed in beauty from around.

* * * * *

This was Zenobia, this was her aspect when she was taken, when the change came over her life.

That marvellous mechanism, the modern state, with its mysterious springs and subterranean attractions and exigencies, drew her in to itself.  The modern state, whose every agent is called Necessity, had appealed to her.  And she had been taken.  She settled on the outskirts of a city and half her life was spent under a canopy of smoke, whilst in the other half she courted morning and evening twilights.  In the first June of this time, in afternoons and evenings, we had lived together among the roses, and she had stood at the zenith of her glory.  But with the coming on of autumn the roses withered, and something of the old dreaminess left her eyes.  A little melancholy settled upon her, and she discovered she was lonely.  But the town had seen her, and henceforth the town took charge of her.  It sent its angels to her.  One might wonder what the town used her for, this inarticulate one—­it made her a teacher because of her good memory.  Then it regarded her as “good material.”  It sent its angels, those voluntary servants of the state, the acquaintances who call themselves friends.  These at first approved of her, always misunderstood her, and at length despised her.  They misunderstood her, because a person truly inarticulate was incomprehensible