ts rays stream through the open shutter and fall upon Georgiana in her
sleep. Sometimes I lie awake for the sole chance of seeing them float
upon her hair, pass lingeringly across her face, and steal holily
downward along her figure. How august she is in her purity! The
whiteness of the fairest cloud that brushes the silvering orb is as
pitch to the whiteness of her nature.

The other night as I lay watching her thus, and while the lower part of
the bed remained in deep shadow, I could see that the thin covering had
slipped aside, leaving Georgiana's feet exposed.

With a start of pain I recollected an old story about her childhood:
that one day for the sake of her rights she had received a wound in one
of her feet--how serious I had never known, but perhaps deforming,
irremediable. My head was raised on the pillow; the moonlight was
moving down that way; it would cross her feet; it would reveal the
truth.

I turned my face away and closed my eyes.

V

It is nearly dark when I reach home from town these January evenings.
However the cold may sting the face and dart inward to the marrow,
Georgiana is waiting at the yard gate to meet me, so hooded and shawled
and ringed about with petticoats--like a tree within its layers of
bark--that she looks like the most thick-set of ordinary sized women;
for there is a heavenly but very human secret hiding in this household
now, and she is thoughtfully keeping it.

"We press our half-frozen cheeks together, as red as wine-sap apples,
and grope for each other's hand through our big lamb's-wool mittens,
and warm our hearts with the laughter in each other's eyes. One
evening she feigned to be mounted on guard, pacing to and fro inside
the gate, against which rested an enormous icicle. When I started to
enter she seized the icicle, presented arms, and demanded the
countersign.

"Love, captain," I said, "If it be not that, slay me at your feet!"

She threw away her great white spear and put her arms around my neck.

"It is 'Peace,'" she said. "But I desert to the enemy."

Without going to my fireside that evening I hurried on to the stable;
for I do not relinquish to my servants the office of feeding my stock.

Believe in the divine rights of kings I never shall, except in the
divine right to be kingly men, which all men share; but truly a divine
right lies for any man in the ownership of a comfortable barn in
winter. It is the feudal castle of the farm to the l