behind a closed window, painting roses and violets on china. Vaguely feeling that love is the artist, who paints roses on the young girls' cheeks and violets in their eyes. Poor, pale little girl.' And she, the proud and beautiful woman shivers and clings to her lover, weeping softly with pity for the unknown girl and with terror lest she herself should lose her own happiness.
Thus I sit lost in dreams with tears in my eyes because the life I lead seems so empty and meaningless, until the noise of a door opening and a sudden light startles me from my fancies. It is father crossing the room to go into the hall to see if the evening paper has come.
He goes silently through the room with a candle in his hand, and when he returns he says, 'Don't you think it is time to light the lamp?'
Then mother sits up on the sofa, where she has been lying half asleep—or perhaps been dreaming like I. I leave the bay-window, fetch the matches and light the hanging lamp. Without being in the mood for talk, each absorbed in our own thoughts, mother and I take our work from the big basket, always filled with stockings and linen which needs repair—for in our house things are mended ten times before they are thrown away.
HOW foolishly I behaved this morning. Mother and I went for our usual walk. Outside the bookshop in New Street I noticed a
