To those who love the country as she did, and, thus loving it, have to dwell in cities, there is as much of pain, perhaps, as of pleasure in a fleeting glimpse of the lost heaven.
She was tired, and sat for a while, and did not see the painting, for it was dusk. She only saw it when she rose to light the lamp: then, with a little shrill cry, she fell on her knees before it in her wonder and her awe, and laughed and sobbed a little, and then was still again, looking at this likeness of herself.
The written words took her long to spell out, for she could scarcely read, but when she had mastered them, her head sank on her breast with a flush and a smile, like the glow of dawn over my own native Provence, I thought.
She knew whence it came, no doubt, though there were many artists and students of art in that street.
But then there was only one who had watched her night after night as men watched the stars of old to read their fates in the heavens.
Lili was only a young ouvrière, she was only a girl of the people: she had quick emotions and innocent impulses; she had led her life straightly because it was her nature, as it is of the lilies—her namesakes, my cousins—to grow straight to the
