her thoughts, or make her understand my feelings and aspirations--was
regarded as pure presumption on my part. The result was that I was less
happy than I had been before knowing her: my naturally buoyant and
hopeful temper became tinged with melancholy, and that vision of
exquisite bliss in the future, which had floated before me, luring me
on, now began to look pale, and to seem further and further away.

After my walk with Yoletta--if it can be called a walk--I began to look
out for the rainbow lilies, and soon discovered that everywhere under
the grass they were beginning to sprout from the soil. At first I found
them in the moist valley of the river, but very soon they were equally
abundant on the higher lands, and even on barren, stony places, where
they appeared latest. I felt very curious about these flowers, of which
Yoletta had spoken so enthusiastically, and watched the slow growth of
the long, slender buds from day to day with considerable impatience. At
length, in a moist hollow of the forest, I was delighted to find the
full-blown flower. In shape it resembled a tulip, but was more open, and
the color a most vivid orange yellow; it had a slight delicate perfume,
and was very pretty, with a peculiar waxy gloss on the thick petals,
still, I was rather disappointed, since the name of "rainbow lily," and
Yoletta's words, had led me to expect a many-colored flower of
surpassing beauty.

I plucked the lily carefully, and was taking it home to present it to
her, when all at once I remembered that only on one occasion had I seen
flowers in her hand, and in the hands of the others, and that was when
they were burying their dead. They never wore a flower, nor had I ever
seen one in the house, not even in that room where Chastel was kept a
prisoner by her malady, and where her greatest delight was to have
nature in all its beauty and fragrance brought to her in the