43

The Tall, Gaunt, Silent Woman ... Striding Through
the Pastures 49

I Seem to See ... a Beautiful Woman in a Blue Dress
Sitting Under a Fruit Tree 105

Persons Born in That Month of That Year Will Never
Be Otherwise Than Far Out of the Ordinary 132

Margarita Stopped and Stared at It Several Minutes 144

For Hours and Hours I Walked, Muttering and Cursing 163

Her Weekly Check, Plus a Draft for a Hundred Pounds 174

She Spins Her Hemp and Weaves Osiers into Baskets
and Changes Them for Goats' Hams 204

The Gloomy, Faded Glories of the Musty Palace 208

Ah, Faithful Caliban, What Hours of Terrible Tuition
Made Thy Task Clear to Thee! 233

He Sketched Her in Charcoal, Dressed (He Would Have
It) in Black 240

It Was After the Garden Love-Scene That She Won
Her Recalls 250

They Are Still as Death, Tranced in Those Liquid Bell-Tones 270

I Leaned Over the Bank and Cried That I Was There,
But She Never Stopped--It Was Terrible 281

It Is a Favourite Claim of Ours Who Are Bidden to That
Home That It Is an Enchanted Isle 296

* * * * *

PART ONE

IN WHICH YOU SEE A SECRET SPRING

O I have seen a fair mermaid,
That sang beside a lonely sea,
And now her long black hair she'll braid,
And be my own good wife to me.

O woe's the day you saw the maid,
And woe's the song she sang the sea,
In hell her long black hair she'll braid,
For ne'er a soul at all has she!

_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._

MARGARITA'S SOUL

CHAPTER I

FATE WALKS BROADWAY

Roger Bradley was walking up Broadway. This fact calls sharply for
comment, for he had not done it in years; the thoroughfare was
intolerable to him. But one of its impingements upon a less blatant
avenue had caught him napping and he found himself entangled in a mesh
of theatre dribblings, pool-room loungers, wine-touts and homeward
bent women of the middle, shopping class. Being there, he scorned to
avail himself of the regularly recurring cross streets, but