and the flutter of their wings. Even the grim old eagle perched on
the pinnacle of the peak was pruning himself, contentedly happy in
the knowledge that his mate had laid an egg in that dark corner of the
cliff. All things rejoiced and cried aloud that summer was at hand and
that it was time to bloom and love and nest. Soon it would be winter
again, when things died, and next summer other things would live under
the sun, and these perchance would be forgotten. That was what they
seemed to say.

And as Jess lay and heard, her youthful blood, drawn by Nature's
magnetic force, as the moon draws the tides, rose in her veins like the
sap in the budding trees, and stirred her virginal serenity. All the
bodily natural part of her caught the tones of Nature's happy voice that
bade her break her bonds, live and love, and be a woman. And lo! the
spirit within her answered to it, flinging wide her bosom's doors, and
of a sudden, as it were, something quickened and lived in her heart that
was of her and yet had its own life--a life apart; something that sprang
from her and another, which would always be with her now and could
never die. She rose pale and trembling, as a woman trembles at the first
stirring of the child that she shall bear, and clung to the flowery
bough of the beautiful bush above, then sank down again, feeling that
the spirit of her girlhood had departed from her, and another angel had
entered there; knowing that she loved with heart and soul and body, and
was a very woman.

She had called to Love as the wretched call to Death, and Love had come
in his strength and possessed her utterly; and now for a little while
she was afraid to pass into the shadow of his wings, as the wretched
who call to Death fear him when they feel his icy fingers. But the fear
passed, and the great joy and the new consciousness of power and of