of it before,--the machines and I. There were rich green leaves and
flowers, gay flowers that shone in light and hid themselves in shade,
and I had always admired their grace and coloring. To-day they had
seemed to me cold and dusky. All my ideas that I had gained from
conventional carpet-flowers, which, woven almost beneath my hand, had
seemed to rival Nature's, all these ideas had been suddenly swept away.
My eyes had opened upon real flowers waving in real sunshine; and my
head grew heavy at the sound of the clanking machine weaving out yards
of unsunned flowers. If only that sunshine, I thought, would light up
these green leaves, put a glow on these brilliant flowers, instead of
this poor coloring which tries to look like sunshine, we might rival
Nature. But the moment I was so thinking, the rays of sunlight I have
spoken of fell on the gay threads. They seemed, before my eyes, to seize
upon the poor yellow fibres which were trying to imitate their own glow,
and, winding themselves round them, I saw the shuttle gather these rays
of sunlight into the meshes of its work. I was to stand there till noon.
So, long before I left, the gleam of sunshine had left the narrow window
and was hidden from the rest of the long room by the gray stone-walls of
another building which rose up outside. But as long as they lingered
over the machine that I was watching, I saw, as though human fingers
were placing them there, rays of sunlight woven in among the green
leaves and brilliant flowers.

After that gleam had gone, my work grew dark and dreary, and, for the
first time, my walls seemed to me like prison-walls. I longed for the
end of my day's work, and rejoiced that the sun had not yet set when I
was free again. I was free to go out across the meadows, up the hills,
to catch the last rays of sunset. Then coming home, I stooped to pick
the flowers which grew by the wayside in the waning light.