their knees shrouded in a deep bloom of purple, vaporous, velvety.
There was a fine old pine-tree near the gate, swinging out across the distant white-and-purple, its great boughs of kind and sunlit green; and Millicent, her eye still upon the snows it emphasised, moved slowly towards it. Like a blessing upon her head, a warbler hid in its branches trilled out his brave little song, and the honeysuckle on the old grey fence beneath breathed into her face the summer scent with which it was welcoming the summer-like sunshine. Millicent opened the gate, and went out upon the road.
It was, it certainly was, a glorious morning! Here, out on the open road, unhindered by the garden trees, she had it in all its beauty. Between her and the mountains there was spread a mighty prospect, leagues wide, of open burnt-bush country, penetrated by light—bathing, soaking in it as it were. Above, the deep blue sky had not one cloud, and the unmoving air shone with that large serenity, that warm splendour, which is characteristic of a New Zealand day after frost, and, so far as I know, is peculiar to it.
Everywhere there was not only light, but radiance. It was as though the frost, and after the frost, the sunshine, had drunk up every little dimness from the face of earth and air and sky; it was as if all dullness was dead, and that for ever. Nothing but looked as new as though it had just been made; not an object but was suddenly a jewel, and shone. In that atmosphere, so keen, so clean, and yet so genial too, only to breathe was one pure joy, simply to exist another—to see, was
