ature forest of pale
golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines.

Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this
underfoot forest.

Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a
spray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it.

"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest with
eggs in it," she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds,
Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. I
shall hurt it unless I'm careful."

She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmering
whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly still
clinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it the
butterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it,
opening and shutting its wings.

It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's
heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose to
her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. What
use, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf
ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace?

The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may
not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes.

As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the tree
trunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon between
the blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed from
the sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that it
is laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears an
overflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant,
perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first spring
tide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now in
that little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked but
yesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bitter
tides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now that
at last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, the
seeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tide
of white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presently
inundate her heart.

Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals from
without--all would go well.

* *