Every fragile blossom, every young leaf, every blade of grass, flung an insult at her as she stood there frowning fiercely at the sunbeams.

Yet only five minutes before she had suffered a sharp recrudescence of soul--of that longing for happiness which is a part of the resurrection of the spring, and which may survive not only the knowledge of its own fruitlessness, but a belief in the existence of the very happiness for which it longs.

All the unlived romance in her heart had come to life with the young green around her.

Middle-age had not deadened, it had merely dulled her.

For the pang of desire is not, after all, the divine prerogative of youth, nor has it even a conscious relation to the possibility of fulfilment.