e a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a
_poisoner_....'

'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?'

'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.'

'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked
things, but were done by the others, too?'

'By the others chiefly.'

'Then I see how it was!'

'How was it?'

'The others had got _spoiled_. The vices and climes must have
begun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing
vices and climes alound them, began to do them, too--as when one rotten
olive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: but
originally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though a
little carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men could
spling now--'

'But I _told_ you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? You
understand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long
process, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continually
developing it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happen
again: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now.
So talk no more of men _splinging_, and of things which you do not
understand. Instead, go inside--stop, I will tell you a secret: to-day
in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath,
meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and it
is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go,
therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.'

She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned,
incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home
to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of
all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals
to the Hesperian realms of her rest.

So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I.

* * * * *

That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros!

I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west--it was a calm clear
evening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I
have written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of
an old windmill to the north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before she
had been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, but
kept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls of