ssible sort of
touch with her, and the most intimate."

"Do they call the earth _her_ in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I
thought they said _it_."

"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's
barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,--fancy
begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother;
our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and
yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling
the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at
her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,--one
would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety.
Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the
sweetness of her,--oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a
Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the
blossoming tree, the singing bird,--I could build temples to her."

"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of
her eyes.

"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful
purpose. He establishes the _raison d'etre_ of man. Man and his heel are
here to crush the serpent's head."

Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.

"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your
lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?"

"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, until I
saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my heart. For the
rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my entire confidence. I have
kept nothing from her."

"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the sea," still
softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your affections?

"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," said John.
"'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured raiment, and holds
the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. And the sea is a jewel
that she bears upon her bosom,--a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's
aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic.
'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could
almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of
those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least
one attribute of humanity."

Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical.

"The dour and detestable