The children love to have me dance gavottes for them.  Some of their mothers consider it levity.  Still they feel the need of a little levity themselves.

We had a great festival when the wild roses were fully in bloom.  The prairie is called a mile square, and wherever a plow has not struck, acres of wild roses grow.  They hedge us from the woods like a parapet edging a court.  These volunteers are very thorny, bearing tender claws to protect themselves with.  But I am nimble with my scissors.

We took the Jordan oxen, a meek pair that have broken sod for the colony, and twined them with garlands of wild roses.  Around and around their horns, and around and around their bodies the long ropes were wound, their master standing by with his goad.  That we wound also, and covered his hat with roses.  The huge oxen swayed aside, looking ashamed of themselves.  And when their tails were ornamented with a bunch at the tip, they switched these pathetically.  Still even an ox loves festivity, whether he owns to it or not.  We made a procession, child behind child, each bearing on his head all the roses he could carry, the two oxen walking tandem, led by their master in front.  Everybody came out and laughed.  It was a beautiful sight, and cheered us, though we gave it no name except the Procession of Roses.

Often when I open my eyes at dawn I hear music far off that makes my heart swell.  It is the waking dream of a king marching with drums and bugles.  While I am dressing I hum, “Oh, Richard, O my king!”

Louis!  Louis!  Louis!

I cannot—­I cannot keep it down!  How can I hold still that righteousness may be done through me, when I love—­love—­love—­when I clench my fists and walk on my knees—­

I am a wicked woman!  What is all this sweet pretense of duty!  It covers the hypocrite that loves—­that starves—­that cries, My king!—­my king!

Strike me!—­drive me within bounds!  This long repression—­years, years of waiting—­for what?—­for more waiting!—­it is driving me mad!

You have the key.

I have nothing!

IX

My God!  What had she seen in me to love?  I sat up and held the book against my bosom.  Its cry out of her past filled the world from horizon to horizon.  The ox that she had wreathed in roses would have heard it through her silence.  But the brutal, slow Bourbon had gone his way, turning his stupid head from side to side, leaving her to perish.

Punctuated by years, bursting from eternities of suppression, it brought an accumulated force that swept the soul out of my body.

All that had not been written in the book was as easily read as what was set down.  I saw the monotony of her life, and her gilding of its rudeness, the pastimes she thought out for children; I saw her nursing the helplessness which leaned upon her, and turning aside the contempt of pioneer women who passionately admired strong men.  I saw her eyes waiting on the distant laggard who stupidly pursued his own affairs until it was too late to protect her.  I read the entries over and over.  When day broke it seemed to me the morning after my own death, such knowing and experiencing had passed through me.  I could not see her again until I had command of myself.