like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
become a blazon, not a branding.

Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.

The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
occasions comes to all--the certainty of being immune to danger--which
is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.