Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/87

 stage," I exclaimed, "how altogether enchanting she would be wading in the brooklet or swinging in the barrel-stave hammock—she with the long, red hair! Perhaps it would even be braided down her back in two long tails."

It is a picture that haunts me—Mrs. Fiske in the midst of her vacation doing the small enjoyable things.

"Of course," said my friend Annabel Lee, "we don't know that she doesn't spend her vacations in a fine, conventional, stupid yacht, or at some magnificent, insipid American or English country house. We can only give her the benefit of the doubt."

"Yes, the benefit of the doubt," I replied.

How fascinating she was, to be sure, with her personality merged in that of Mary Magdalene!

The Magdalene is no longer a shadowy