High above the earth, over land and sea, floated the seed-down, borne on the autumn wind's strong arms.

"Here shall you lie, little seed-down," said he at last, and put it down on the ground, and laid a fallen leaf over it. Then he flew away immediately, because he had much to look after.

That was in the dark evening, and the seed could not see where it was placed, and besides, the leaf covered it.

Something heavy came now, and pressed so hard that the seed came near being destroyed; but the leaf, weak though it was, protected it.

It was a human foot which walked along over the ground, and pressed the downy seed into the earth. When the foot was withdrawn, the earth fell, and filled the little pit it had made.

The cold came, and the snow fell several feet deep; but the seed lay quietly down there, waiting for warmth and light. When the spring came, and the snow melted away, the plant shot up out of the earth.

There was a little gray cottage beside which it grew up. The tiny plant could not see very far around, because rubbish and brush-heaps lay near it, and the little window was so gray and dusty that it could not peep into the cottage either.

"Who lives here?" asked the little thing.

"Don't you know that?" asked the ragged shoe, which lay near. "Why, the smith who drinks so much lives here, and his wife who wore me out."

And then she told how it looked inside, how life went on there, and it was not cheering; no, but fearfully sad. The shoe knew it all well, and told a whole lot in a few minutes, because she had such a well-hung tongue.

Now there came a pair of ragged children, running-the smith's boy and girl; he was six years old and the girl eight, so the shoe said, after they were gone.

"Oh, see, what a pretty little plant!" said the girl. "So now, I shall pull it up," said the boy, and the plant trembled to the root's heart.

"No, do not do it!" said the girl. "We must let it grow. Do you not see what pretty crinkly leaves it has? It will have lovely flowers, I know, when it grows bigger."

And it was allowed to stay there. The children took a stick and dug up the earth round about, so it looked like a plowed field. Then they threw the shoe and the sweepings a little way off, because they thought to make the place look better.

"You cannot think," said the shoe, after the children had gone, "you cannot think how in the way folks are!"

"The children have to give themselves airs, and pretend to be very orderly," said the half of a coffee-cup; and she broke in another place she was so disturbed.

But the sun shone warmly and the rain filtered down in the upturned earth. Then leaf after leaf unfolded, and in a few days the plant was several inches high.

"Oh, see!" said the children, who came again; "see how beautiful it is getting!"

"Come, father, come! brother and I have discovered such a pretty plant! Come and see it!" begged the girl.

The father glanced at it. The plant looked so lovely on the little rough bit of soil which lay between the piles of sweepings.

The smith nodded to the children.

"It looks very disorderly here," he said to himself, and stopped an instant. "Yes, indeed, it does!" He went along, but thought of the little green spot, with the lovely plant in the midst of it.

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p>

"Oh, yes, of course, you thought of me. You filled in from me. But the inspiration, the wish to write it, came from the image—"

"It is certainly true that I love to look at it, as I love to look at a picture of you—because it is you—"

"As yet, no doubt, but you will soon love it for its own sake. You are already beginning."

"I love an image! You are too ridiculous, Beatrice."

"Does it really seem so strange, dear? I sometimes think you have never loved anything else."

Antony had laughed down Beatrice's fancies, yet all the time she had been talking he was conscious that the idea she had suggested was appealing to him with a perverse fascination.

To love, not the literal beloved, but the purified stainless image of her,—surely this would be to ascend into the region of spiritual love, a love unhampered and untainted by the earth.

As he said this to himself, his mind, ever pitilessly self-conscious, knew it was but a subterfuge, a fine euphemism for a strange desire which he had known was already growing within him; for when Beatrice had spoken of his loving an image, it was no abstract passion he had conceived, but some fanciful variation of earthly love—a love of beauty centring itself upon some form midway between life and death, inanimate and yet alive, human and yet removed from the accidents of humanity.

To love an image with one's whole heart! If only one could achieve that—and never come out of the dream.

These thoughts gave him a new desire to look again at the image. He felt that in some way she would be changed, and he hastened up the wood in a strange expectancy.