ending is simple enough; some tales do end happily, you know."
"And it did end happily?" I ask, very low, while the dread that has for the past minutes been creeping about my heart, trembles and dies.
"Yes; I will show her to you some day." Has the bird gone in at heaven's gate, or are my ears too deaf to hear him? What is this greyness that is creeping over land and sea? The little white sail has vanished, and the diamonds that broidered the ocean's breast have died dully out.
"I hope, sir," says a gentle voice, that sounds something like mine, "that you found her all you could wish."
Looking idly down at my lap, I see all my pretty flowers lying headless; did my fingers strip them from their stalks?
"It is cold," I say, shivering; "let us go in."
Side by side, down the green glade, we move in silence. "Oh, fool!" the trees seem to whisper as I pass. "Oh, fool!" cry the birds, in their mocking shrill voices. "Oh, fool!" cries louder and deeper my heavy, heavy heart. If I could only laugh aloud, jest, speak carelessly. . . . About fifty paces from our seat we meet Alice, fresh and fair and blooming as the morning itself. Alice is one of those few people who can look as well by daylight as waxlight. After the usual salutations—
"How pale you are!" she says to me. Why did you get up so early?"
"You forget how I danced last night," I say, turning aside to pick up my small nephew, who is rendered the freak of fortune as much by reason of the length of his swallow-tailed pelisse as by the unsteadiness of his legs. How she ever got him so far up is a mystery; how to get him down again, I find by experience, is a work of time and difficulty.
Alice and Paul are talking about the ball; she with much spirit,
