calamity had at length come to pass. Broken through the upper part of the
stem, the listless flower drooped its petals towards the earth, and seemed
to mourn their chastity, already sullied by the wan flaccidity of decay.
Not one had fallen as yet, and Iridion felt no pain or any symptom of
approaching dissolution, except, it may be, the unwonted seriousness with
which, having exhausted all her simple skill on behalf of the languishing
plant, she sat down to consider its fate in the light of its bearing upon
her own.

Meditation upon an utterly vague subject, whether of apprehension or of
hope, speedily lapses into reverie. To Iridion, Death was as indefinable an
object of thought as the twin omnipotent controller of human destiny, Love.
Love, like the immature fruit on the bough, hung unsoliciting and
unsolicited as yet, but slowly ripening to the maiden's hand. Death, a
vague film in an illimitable sky, tempered without obscuring the sunshine
of her life. Confronted with it suddenly, she found it, in truth, an
impalpable cloud, and herself as little competent as the gravest
philosopher to answer the self-suggested inquiry, "What shall I be when I
am no longer Iridion?" Superstition might have helped her to some definite
conceptions, but superstition did not exist in her time. Judge, reader, of
its remoteness.

The maiden's reverie might have terminated only with her existence, but for
the salutary law which prohibits a young girl, not in love or at school,
from sitting still more than ten minutes. As she shifted her seat at the
expiration of something like this period, she perceived that she had been
sitting on a goatskin, and with a natural association of ideas--

"I will ask Pan," she exclaimed.

Pan at that time inhabited a cavern hard by the maiden's dwelling, which
the judicious reader will have divined could only have been situated in
Arcadia. The honest god was on excellent terms with the simple people; his
goats browsed freely along with theirs, and the most melodious of the
rustic minstrels attributed their proficiency to his instructions. The
maidens were on a more reserved footing of intimacy--at least so they
wished it to be understood, and so it was understood, of course. Iridion,
however, decided that the occasion would warrant her incurring the risk
even of a kiss, and lost no time in setting forth upon her errand, carrying
her poor broken flower in its earthen vase. It was the time of day when the