orlds before this one. I have not
seen you in these habiliments of flesh and blood, and yet--we may be
friends?"

John Hartington, used to the thin jests of the village girls, and all
their simple talk, rose, nevertheless, enlightened as he was with some
strange sympathy with her, to understand and answer what she said.

"I think perhaps it may be so. May I come in beside you in the field?
Give me the pail. I'll milk the cow for you."

She threw her head back and laughed like a girl from school, and he
laughed too, and they shook hands. Then she sat near him while he
milked, both keeping silence, save for the p-rring noise he made with
his lips to the patient beast. Being through, she served him with a
cupful of the fragrant milk; but he bade her drink first, then drank
himself, and then they laughed again, as if they both had found
something new and good in life.

Then she,--

"Come see how well my bees are doing." And they went. She served him
with the lucent syrup of the bees, perfumed with the mignonette,--such
honey as there never was before. He sat on the broad doorstep, near
the scarlet poppies, she on the grass, and then they talked--was it one
golden hour--or two? Ah, well, 'twas long enough for her to learn all of
his simple life, long enough for her to know that he was victor at the
races at the school, that he could play the pipe, like any shepherd of
the ancient days, and when he went he asked her if he might return.

"Well," laughed she, "sometimes I am lonely. Come see me--in a week."

Yet he was there that day at twilight, and he brought his silver pipe,
and piped to her under the stars, and she sung ballads to him,--songs
of Strephon and times when the hills were young, and flocks were fairer
than they ever be these days.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," and still the intercourse,
still her dark loveliness waxing, still the weaving of the mystic spell,
still happiness as primitive and as sweet as ever Eden knew.

Then came a twilight when the sweet rain fell, and on the heavy air the
perfumes of the fields floated. The woman stood by the window of the
cot, looking out. Tall, graceful, full of that subtle power which drew
his soul; clothed in white linen, fragrant from her fields, with breath
freighted with fresh milk, with eyes of flame, she was there to be
adored. And he, being man of manliest type, forgot all that might have
checked the words, and poured his soul out at her feet.