lines of shoulders, bust, and waist, fit to be
those of that same goddess.

She was a splendid woman. The well-
formed white soft hands made me conclude
that she was also, by conventional rank, a
lady.

We returned as we had come; only that
the sunset mirrored in the river, the swans,
the sedges, the rippling run of the water,
the capricious warm breathings of the soft
wind seemed, yet more than the morning
brightness, things of a dream. We reached
the widow's lodging at about the child's
bedtime.

She did not ask me to go in, but I went
in.

She told the child to thank me for " a
happy, happy time;" which the little thing
did with a prettiness pathetic to think of
afterwards, adding, of her own accord:

"And for showing me the lilies and the
pretty swans."

The mother hung on her words with
rapture, and then, raising her face to mine,
said:

"If you make my child able to walk in
the warm sunny grass, on her own little
feet, I will learn to believe in a loving God,
that I may call His choicest blessings down
upon you. I will entreat Him to prosper
you in all your doings, to gladden your
whole life, to let the love of women and of
little children sweeten all your days."

I pressed, in parting, the hand she held
out to me. After I had left her, her last
words went echoing through my brain.

When I got home I tried to apply myself
to hard study quite vainly. But I do not
think that she, alone, was responsible for
this. I believe that, just at the time when
I first met her, my brain was on the point
of giving-in, and of resenting the strain of
some years.

This phase, at all events, of my collapse,
had a strange deliciousness about it. Soft
thoughts and sweet fancies thronged upon
me. I gave myself up to them, weary of
the effort of self-mastery.

Again and again, as I fell asleep, I was
gliding softly down a sunny river. I
seemed to hear the dip and splash of oars,
to feel the movement of the boat under the
impulse given by them, and then the words,
"May the love of women and of little
children sweeten all your days!" sounded in
my ears with such distinctness, and seemed
to come from a voice so near, that I awoke
with a start, and a feeling that I should see
the speaker standing beside my bed, and
that I had felt her breath upon my brow.

Then, like a fool as I was, I lay thinking
of the woman who had spoken those words.
"What a rich low voice she has; what
sweet deep eyes she has; what a shapely
foot she has; what a splendid form it is;
what a soft white steady hand she has!"

"Yes," I then said to myself, trying to
deceive myself. " She would make a first-
rate hospital nurse; strong, calm, gentle,
wise."

Next day, a day of intense excitement to
me, the operation was performed. It was
successfully performed. Everything that
happened at about this time, after that
Sunday on the river, seems wrapped in a
dream-haze.

But I have a distinct recollection that
Dr. Fearnwell said to me, " Dowlass, you
are over-doing it; I don't like the look of
your eyes; take a holiday." But whether
this was before the operation, or after it,
I don't know. I know that I made him
some jesting answer, and laughed at his
grave concern.

I know that late in that day, when I
first saw Mrs. Rosscar after the operation,
her expression of her passionate joy and
gratitude made me half delirious with an
uncomprehended feeling—and that part of
it was fear.

The child, after the operation, was placed
in one of the wards of the hospital. The
mother left it neither night nor day. I
had prevailed in getting this exception to
rule allowed; and for this her gratitude
was almost as great as for our other
success.

Through the day after the operation, and
the day following that, I often stole a few
moments to go and look at the little patient
sufferer, and at the joy-illumined radiant
face of the mother. The more radiant the
mother's face was, and the more entirely
all seemed well, the more I felt afraid.

When, on the third day, the child sank—
died in its sleep—I knew it was of that, I
had been afraid.

I cannot even now account for the child's
death. It should have lived and grown
strong; there was no inflammation; the
success of the operation was perfect.

Perhaps it was a child born not to live.
Perhaps the constant presence of its mother
made it keep up too strong a strain of self-
control, for its strength. It must have
suffered, but it did not moan, or cry, or give
any sign of suffering, except what was to
be read on the often-damp brow and in
the over-dilated eyes. "Eyes!" Yes. It
is always " eyes." Eyes are always