disappeared, like a star into the morning mist, into the cherry-tree, when the evening bell sent the sun down across the West, and the flower-petals fell fast to the ground ; I began to dream of the luminous moment of meeting with that lady of apparition, when my boyhood grew to ripen into youth, and of the ecstasy of shock and deathless joy in her single touch. I confess I was ever so haunted by the woman of the cherry-tree. The pain I earned from realising the fact that I should never get her, although she was within my hand's graps, became healed only lately.
Where I lost my idealism I got humanity; to-day, when my days of youth have begun to fade into the colour of grey, I am married, and have chileren crawling by my side. The story of the willow-tree appeals to my mind more intensely than the lady of the cherry-blossom. I think that the worship of the tree belongs to an age ten years later than the flower adoration.
