at me as I raised my eyes from the soft blue folds to meet the light of
the blue eyes above them, she said:

"How does my dress please Mademoiselle Emily?"

"Oh!" I replied, "I never saw so beautiful a dress." She smiled one of
her bright quick smiles as if some fancy struck her, and said, laying
her hand over the bow at her heart,

"And this too?"

"Both are beautiful in my eyes," I said, "and so suited to you Clara."

After supper we were going to take a walk, and Clara went to her room,
doffed the blue Foulard and came down in the grey mohair. We had a
beautiful walk out from under the shade of the o'erarching chestnut
trees before our door, along the grassy highway leading to the upper
meadow, over the smooth newly-cut field on to the edge of the birch
woods beyond. There we rested quiet, coming back when the moon rose over
the hills and the stars hung out like lanterns on our track.

We talked. Clara had her seasons of soul-talk as she called it, and that
night she read me a full page of her inner self the purport of which I
shall never forget. The more she revealed to me of herself the more I
loved her, and her words suggested thoughts that filled my
soul--thoughts which, in depths within myself I had never dreamed of,
found and swept a string that ere long broke its sweet harmonies on my
spirit. I seemed, all at once, to develop in spiritual stature and to
have become complex to myself.