1

It is typical autumn weather, a dull, dark day which seems never to have fully dawned. Beneath the burden of the weary, oppressive clouds, the grass is greener and the roads more distinct. The light seems to rise to the sky instead of falling from it.

I have been in the kitchen-garden for an hour. There all the plants are beaten down by the wind and the rain; the asparagus-fronds lie across the paths like tangled hair; but the broad-bottomed cabbages are a joy to the eye, with their air of comfortable middle-class prosperity. Looking at their closely enfolded hearts, I seemed to recover the illusion of my childhood, of the days when my eyes pictured mystery in their depths....

How amazed we are when one of our senses happens to receive a sudden impression, in the same way as when we were children! We behold the same object simultaneously in the present and the past; and between those two points, identical and yet different
to our eyes, our memory tries to stretch a thread that can help it to follow the thousand and one intermediate transformations which have led us from the false to the true, from the wonderful to the simple, from dreams to reality. We should, no doubt, discover here, in the subtle history of our sensations and the different ways in which we received them, the gradual forming of our character, the pathetic progress of our little knowledge, all the frail elements of our personal life; in a word, the plastic substance of our joys and sorrows....

I think of the little girl that I was, but between her and me there stands a long array of children, girls and women. And I can do nothing but inwardly repeat:

"How soon we lose our traces!..."

I smile at the memory of myself as we smile at the unknown child that brushes against us in passing; and I leave myself to return to Rose....
2

She is a never-failing source of satisfaction to me. My dreams glory in having discovered so much hidden virtue here, at my door; and I am surprised at the new pleasures which I am constantly finding in her.

In certain natures predisposed to happiness, such happy surprises are prolonged and constantly renewed; and this may be one of the innocent secrets of the intellect. Are there not a thousand ways of interpreting a feeling, even as there are a thousand ways of considering an object? Our mind observes it daily under a different aspect, turns and turns it again, sees it from above and below, sees it near and from afar and loves to show it off and place it in the most favourable light. The mind of every woman, especially of a woman with an artistic bias, is not without a secret harmony of colour, line and proportion. Something intentional even enters into it; and the caprices of her soul are often but an outcome of her desire to please. Her natural instinct, which is always inclined to give form to the most subtle of her sensations, enables her to find in goodness the same clinging grace which she loves in her clothes. She likes her happiness to be obvious and highly coloured, that it may rejoice the eyes of those around her; and, so as not to sadden their eyes, she paints the bitterness of her heart in neutral shades of drab and grey. By thinking herself better, she appears prettier in her own sight; and it seems to her, as she consults her mirror,
that she is replying to her own destiny. The soft waves of her hair teach her how frail is her will by the side of her life. She learns to bestow her own reward on the sympathy of her heart by crowning her forehead with her two bare arms; and, when she sees the long folds of her dress winding around her body, she recognises the sinuous, slow, but determined bent of her feminine power.

I remember once being present at a meeting between two women who gave me a charming proof of our natural inclination to lend shape and substance to our thoughts and feelings. They were of different nationalities and neither of them could speak the other\'s language. Both were of a warm and sensitive nature, endowed with an analytical and artistic temperament; and, as soon as they came together amidst the boredom of a fashionable crowd, they sat down in a corner and, with the aid of a few ordinary words, of facial expression, of vocal intonation, but above all by means of gesticulation, they succeeded, in a few m............