Fiction > Book editions > London, 1888 - Prince Otto

A ROMANCE 247
the hot eye of the clay, she turned uneasily
and looked sighingly about her. Some way of!
among the lower woods, a pillar of smoke Avas
mounting and melting in the gold and blue.
There, surely enough, were human folk, the
hearth-surrounders. Man's fingers had laid the
twigs ; it was man's breath that had quickened and
encouraged the baby flames ; and now, as the fire
caught, it would be playing ruddily on the face of
its creator. At the thought, she felt a- cold and
little and lost in that great out-of-doors. The
electric shock of the young sunbeams and the
unhuman beauty of the woods began to irk and
daunt her. The covert of the house, the decent
privacy of rooms, the swept and regulated fire,
all that denotes or beautifies the home life of
man, began to draw her as with cords. The
pillar of smoke was now risen into some stream
of moving air ; it began to lean out sideways in
a pennon ; and thereupon, as though the change
had been a summons, Seraphina plunged once
more into the labyrinth of the wood.
She left day upon the high ground. In the
lower groves there still lingered the blue early
twilight and the seizing freshness of the dew.
But here and there, above this field of shadow,
the head of a great outspread pine was already
glorious with day ; and here and there, through
the breaches of the hills, the sunbeams made a