e fountain whose basin seems to round itself into an
obliging mirror for their benefit. Here, amid the cool stillness, the
running water murmurs its unceasing orison.

I make Rose sit beside the fountain and slowly I begin unbinding her
hair.

Oh, the beauty of the honey-coloured waves that roll down her shoulders
and frame her face in their sweetness! Again and again I lifted and
shook out those long-imprisoned tresses, giving them life and liberty at
last. Rose, following the ancient fashion of our Norman peasant-women,
does her hair into a mass of tight little plaits, twisted so cruelly as
to forbid all freedom.

The better to efface the impress of their tyrannical past, I had to dip
them into water. They opened out, like sea-weed.

I had brought rich materials, jewels and flowers for Rose's adornment.
All her beauty, so long hidden, was at last to stand revealed. I knew
its potency, I divined its splendour; but her hair was too barbarously
done, her garments too coarse and rough for me to discover the character
of her beauty or say what constituted its nobility.

Rose, still smiling, held her head back patiently and, with closed eyes,
gave herself over to my tender mercies. Then another picture, a similar
picture, but tragic and now fading into dimness, rose in my mind; and,
almost in spite of myself, I said, softly:

"Your long hair must have floated like this, I expect, on the day when
you wished to die. And it must have been its splendour that would not
suffer such a catastrophe. I wonder, dear, that you should have wished
that, you who are so faint-hearted in the presence of life!"

Her forehead, bronzed by the summer suns, turned a warmer colour, like a
ripe apricot; the veins on her temples swelled a little; and she
murmured:

"I don't know ... I don't know...."

I made fruitless efforts to find out the cause of her embarrassment;
her face clouded; and she said nothing more. Then, after doing up her
hair, I began to drape a material around her. I was thoroughly enjoying
myself. Rose noticed it and asked me why I was smiling.

"Why?" I cried. "Why? Oh, of course, you are incapable at present of
understanding the pleasure which I feel! And how many are there who
could distinguish its true quality? People admire the new-blown flower,
they are touched by a child's first smile, they travel day and night to
stand on a mountain-top and see the dawn conquering the shadows of the
earth; and it is considered