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and weird, as if the life of the woods had suddenly developed something almost hostile to me—something at least that was furtive and alien and unacquainted. I could fancy that I heard stealthy footsteps all around me—that strange eyes were watching me through the boughs. When I reached the open space and hopped over the fence into Aunt Ruth’s back yard I felt as if I were escaping from some fascinating but not altogether hallowed locality—a place given over to Paganism and the revels of satyrs. I don’t believe the woods are ever wholly Christian in the darkness. There is always a lurking life in them that dares not show itself to the sun but regains its own with the night.

“You should not be out in the damp with that cough of yours,’ said Aunt Ruth.

“But it wasn’t the damp that hurt me—for I was hurt. It was that little fascinating whisper of something unholy. I was afraid of it—and yet I loved it. The beauty I had loved on the hill-top seemed suddenly quite tasteless beside it. I sat down in my room and wrote another poem. When I had written it I felt that I had exorcised something out of my soul and Emily-in-the-Glass seemed no longer a stranger to me.

“Aunt Ruth has just brought in a dose of hot milk and cayenne pepper for my cough. It is on the table before me—I have to drink it—and it has made both Paradise and Pagan-land seem very foolish and unreal!

“Dean came home from New York last Friday and that evening we walked and talked in New Moon garden in a weird, uncanny twilight following a rainy day. I had a light dress on and as Dean came down the path he said,

“When I saw you first I thought you were a wild, white cherry-tree—like that’—and he pointed to one that