rself really
rescued, and out where the sun and wind, her well-known friends, were
larking about among the tombstones, she laid her cheek as affectionately
against her father's head as if she were a daughter to be proud of, and
would have purred if she had had had a purr as loudly as the most
satisfied and virtuous of cats.

"_Mein Kind_," said her father, standing her up on a convenient tomb so
that her eyes were level with his, "is it then true about the cold
potato?"

"No," said Anna-Felicitas patting his face, pleased at what her legs
were feeling like again.

"_Mein Kind_," said her father, "do you not know it is wrong to lie?"

"No," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, the heavenly blue of her eyes,
gazing straight into his, exactly like the mild sky above the trees.

"No?" echoed her father, staring at her. "But, _Kind_, you know what a
lie is?"

"No," said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him tenderly in her satisfaction at
being restored to a decent pair of legs; and as he still stood staring
at her she put her hands one on each of his cheeks and squeezed his face
together and murmured, "Oh, I do _love_ you."

CHAPTER X

Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat with her
eyes shut long after she needn't have.

She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the future
so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of the Baltic
again, where bits of amber where washed up after a storm, and the pale
rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was hardly salt, and the air
seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the cottage gardens in the little
village that clustered round a clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in
them, for there was something in the soil that made lilacs be more
wonderful there than anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole
forest as far as one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After
rain on a May evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running
down the black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to
the shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of
the afternoon over on one's left where Denmark was, and that lifting of
one's face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea smell and the
lilac. And then there was home to come back to when the forest began to
look too dark and its deep silence made one's flesh creep--home, and a
light in the window where ones mother was. Incredible the secur