--"
he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the
garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our
treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe!
safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is
this _your_ buried treasure? The light in the heart."

A SOCIETY

This is how it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day
after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a
milliner's shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet
feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building
little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so
far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to
praise men--how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how
beautiful they were--how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed
to get attached to one for life--when Poll, who had said nothing, burst
into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing
her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on
condition that she read all the books in the London Library. We
comforted her as best we could; but we knew in our hearts how vain it
was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces
untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one
of them would ever wish to marry her. At last she dried her tears. For
some time we could make nothing of what she said. Strange enough it was
in all conscience. She told us that, as we knew, she spent most of her
time in the London Library, reading. She had begun, she said, with
English literature on the top floor; and was steadily working her way
down to the _Times_ on the bottom. And now half, or perhaps only a
quarter, way through a terrible thing had happened. She could read no
more. Books were not what we thought them. "Books," she cried, rising to
her feet and speaking with an intensity of desolation which I shall
never forget, "are for the most part unutterably bad!"

Of course we cried out that Shakespeare wrote books, and Milton and
Shelley.

"Oh, yes," she interrupted us. "You've been well taught, I can see. But
you are not members of the London Library." Here her sobs broke forth
anew. At length, recovering a little, she opened one of the pile of
books which she always carried about with her--"From a Window" or "In a
Gard