She was leaving,--but she had stayed too long; not the child with yellow braids, humorously preserved in my memory, but a blossomed, a fruiting Eve, with whilom braids massed high in a coronet, their gold a little tarnished.
Later it came to me to think that she was Spring, and had filched a crown from Autumn.

In that first glance, however, I could only wonder instinctively if the tassels yet danced from her boot tops.

I saw at once that this might not any longer be known.

One could only surmise pleasantly.

But straightway was I Atlas, stooping a little, rounding my shoulders under the earth she deigned to walk upon.
And the disconcerting strangeness of it was in this: that though she was no longer the woman child, yet with one flash of her gold-curtained eyes had she reduced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness.