CHAPTER IX

THE LEGEND OF HEBE, OR THE HEAVENLY HOUSEMAID

Yes, I blush to admit it, my First Love was a housemaid. So was
she known on this dull earth of ours, but in heaven--in the
heaven of my imagination, at all events--she was, of course, a
goddess. How she managed to keep her disguise I never could
understand. To me she was so obviously dea certe. The nimbus was
so apparent. Yet no one seemed to see it but me. I have heard
her scolded as though she were any ordinary earthly housemaid,
and I have seen the butcher's boy trying to flirt with her
without a touch of reverence.

Maybe I understood because I saw her in that early hour of the
morning when even the stony Memnon sings, in that mystical light
of the young day when divine exiled things, condemned to rough
bondage through the noon, are for a short magical hour their own
celestial selves, their unearthly glory as yet unhidden by any
earthly disguise.

Neither fairies nor fauns, dryads nor nymphs of the forest pools,
have really passed away from the world. You have only to get up
early enough to meet them in the meadows. They rarely venture
abroad after six. All day long they hide in uncouth enchanted
forms. They change maybe to a field of turnips, and I have seen