Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging, shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind’s eye in white raiment, and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on her lips.  Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover.  Even thus do we worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most exigent deity.  Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.

The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite.  The wood below was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its fastnesses.  Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare occasions comes to all—­the certainty of being immune to danger—­which is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.

She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below.  A last spring, and she was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her ankles with a dry little rustling.  It was the wood’s caress of greeting, and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.

Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening to the echo dying away, unaffrighted.  She was young and strong and beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet.  She was different, and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ... she was Loveday, Loveday ...  Loveday...

She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the intimate evening note of the birds.

And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties, for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear calling was their alikeness to artificiality.  She felt thin slippers on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol of the Bugletown band on Flora Day.  Save in her sincerity, she was as artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fete Champetre.  What were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!