cts, the tender rustling of the
leaves, and the gentle murmuring of the stream itself. Then I looked at
her, from the golden hair upon her head down to its shadow in the brook
below. I saw her hands folded over each other, and, suddenly, they
looked to me very thin and white and very weary. I looked at her again,
and her whole posture was one of languor and weariness,--the languor of
the body, not a weariness of the soul. There was a happy smile on the
lips, and a gleam of happiness from under the half-closed eyes. But, oh,
so tired and faint did the slender body look that I almost feared to see
the happier spirit leave it, as though it were incumbered by something
which could not follow it.

"Margaret!" I exclaimed. "You are wearing yourself away. You were never
made for such labor. You cannot learn this sort of toil. You are of the
sunshine, to play above the dusty earth, to gladden the dreary places.
Look at my hands, that are large for work,--at my heavy shoulders,
fitted to bear the yoke. Let me work for us both, and you shall still be
the inspiration of my work, and the sunshine that makes it gold. The
work we talked of is drudgery for you; you cannot bear it."

I think she would not agree to what I said about her work. She "had
began to learn how to find life in every-day work, just as she saw a new
sun rise every day." But she did agree that we would work together,
without asking where our sunshine came from, or our inspiration.

So it was settled. And her work was around and within the old
"natural-colored" house, whose walls by this time were half-embowered in
vines. There was gay sunshine without and within. And the lichen was
yellow that grew on the deeply sloping roof, and we liked to plant
hollyhocks and sunflowers by the side of the quaint old building, while
scarlet honeysuckles and trumpet-flowers and gay convolvuli gladdened
the front porch.

There was but one question that was left to be disputed between us.
Margaret still believed I was an artist, all-undeveloped.

"Those sunbeams"--

"I had nothing to do with them. They married golden threads that seemed
kindred to them."

"It is not true. Sunbeams cannot exist without the sun. Your magnetic
power, perhaps, attracted the true sunbeam, and you recreated others."

She fancies, if I would only devote myself to Art, I might become an
American Murillo, and put a Madonna upon canvas.

But before we carried the new sunshine into the old house, I