Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/70

 among the strands to draw them to her face. She was leaving—but she had stayed too long; not the child with yellow braids, humorously preserved in my memory, but a blossomed, a fruiting Eve, with whilom braids massed high in a coronet, their gold a little tarnished. Later it came to me to think that she was Spring, and had filched a crown from Autumn. In that first glance, however, I could only wonder instinctively if the tassels yet danced from her boot tops. I saw at once that this might not any longer be known. One could only surmise pleasantly. But straightway was I Atlas, stooping a little, rounding my shoulders under the earth she deigned to walk upon.

And the disconcerting strangeness of it was in this: that though she was no longer the woman child, yet with one flash of her gold-curtained eyes had she reduced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness. She was a woman, but I was again an awkward, stammering boy, rebelliously declining to believe that a state she had come away from could retain any significance, industrial or otherwise. Nor, in the little time left to us, did I ever achieve a condition higher than this.

Consciously I was a prince of lofty origin in her presence, but ever unable to make known my excellencies of rank. It was as in a dream when we must see evil approach without power to raise an averting hand.

She was Spring with a stolen crown of Autumn;