"How old he is—my turtle! He must have seen many lovers."
"But none so happy, dearest."
Then one night, when the leaves were falling, and a chill wind wrinkled the pool, had come another woman with the man called Louis, and she had said:
"How can you bear to have that turtle in the pool? I hate old things!"
She had drawn her cloak about her as if she were cold, and her voice had sighed above the sound of the wind, "The winter is coming, Louis, and my heart is empty."
After that, the first woman had come no more. And the fountain had ceased to play. But there were springs under the pool which fed it, so the lilies still bloomed in the summer time, and the flowers still blazed bravely on the bank, and the butterflies came, and the bees, and the goldfish multiplied until they sparkled like flames beneath the surface, and there were frogs who sat sociably on the old turtle's back and kept him company.
So he was, as turtles go, content. Even in winter it was not so bad—for the birds rested on the way south, and rested again when they flew north, and in between there was the snow, soft as a blanket.
And now winter was on the way again, and a thin film of ice was on the edge of the pool, and a girl was standing where the other girl had stood so long ago, and she was saying:
"How lonely he looks!"
But the bronze turtle was not lonely, for there were
