Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/76

 which you have yet beheld is the rare beauty of Liane, my gorgeous, perfect little flower-girl. I have watched her grow from infancy. I have tended and nurtured her as I have the rarest of my orchids. Never since childhood has she been out of the flower-realms which lie in the lower stories of my house. Her world has been a world of peonies and lotuses, of mimosa and oleanders, of cherry-blossoms and pink orchids. Nothing sordid has she ever heard. The flowers are her friends. She talks to them, understands their every wish. Her existence is one of complete happiness. How she came into my house is simple to relate. I found her lying on a mountain-top in the rugged ranges that lie west of Pekin. She was a tiny baby, not much bigger than a flower-bud. Her chubby thumb was sticking in her mouth and she was cooing at the moon. Evidently she had been abandoned by some family who could not stand the disgrace of the birth of a girl baby. I was quite taken by the beauty of the child and impulsively I decided to keep her always. I lifted her up in my arms and soothed her to sleep. When I returned to Canton I brought the baby with me to this great house that grows into the ground like a mighty tree. Since that day she has remained always in these realms of flowers. As I have said I have nurtured her, guarded her against all the evils and sordidness of life until today she is like a lovely full-blossomed rose. She draws life from the flowers even as does the sun. I