cool and lonely, and even as she learned the lies and treacheries of men, so she longed to leave them behind her and die in bitterness less bitter for its solitude. But Maya fled not from herself: the winds wailed like the crying of despair in her harp-voiced pines; the shining oak-leaves rustled hisses upon her unstrung ear; the timid forest-creatures, who own no rule but patient love and caresses, hid from her defiant step and dazzling eye; and when she knew herself in no wise healed by the ministries of Nature, in the very apathy of desperation she flung herself by the clear fountain that had already fallen upon her lips and cooled them with bitter water, and hiding her head under the broad, fresh leaves of a calla that bent its marble cups above her knitted brow and loosened hair, she lay in deathlike trance, till the Fairy Anima swept her feet with fringed garments, and cast the serpent wand writhing and glittering upon her breast.
"Wake, Maya!" said the organ-tones of the Spark-Bringer; and Maya awoke.
"So! the Spark galls thee?" resumed those deep, bitter-sweet tones; and for answer the Princess Maya held toward her, with accusing eyes, the broken, bloodless opal.
"Cordis's folly!" retorted Anima. "Thou hadst done best without it, Maya; the Spark abides no other fate but shining. Yet there is a little hope for thee. Wilt thou die of the bitter fire, or wilt thou turn beggar-maid? The sleep that charity lends to its couch shall rest thee; the draught a child brings shall slake thy thirst; the food pity offers shall strengthen and renew. But these are not the gifts a Princess receives; she who gathers them must veil the Crown, shroud the Spark, conceal the Curse, and in torn robes, with bare and bleeding feet, beg the crumbs of life from door to door. Wilt thou take up this trade?"
Maya rose up from the leaves of the cool lily, and put aside the veiling masses of her hair.
"I will go!" she whispered, flutelike, for hope beat a living pulse in her brain.
So with scrip and hood she went out of the forest and begged of the world's bounty such life as a beggar-maid may endure.
Long ago the King and Queen died in Larrièrepensée, and there the Princess Maddala reigns with a goodly Prince beside her, nor cares for her lost sister; but songless, discrowned, desolate, Maya walks the earth.
All ye whose fires burn bright on the hearth, whose dwellings ring with child-laughter, or are hushed with love-whispers and the peace of home, pity the Princess Maya! Give her food and shelter; charm away the bitter flames that consume her life and soul; drop tears and alms together into the little wasted hand that pleads with dumb eloquence for its possessor; and even while ye pity and protect, revere that fretted mark of the Crown that still consecrates to the awful solitude of sorrow Maya, the Child of the Kingdom!
CATAWBA WINE.
This song of mine
Is a Song of the Vine,
To be sung by the glowing embers
Of wayside inns,
When the rain begins
To darken the drear Novembers.
