Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

“ But Marcia at his side, smiling in the shadow of her plumed hat, the familiar violets nestling in her dark furs, seemed the visible embodiment of all these soft, sweet intimations of spring. Not yet jocund, as spring come into her own crowned with flowers and laughing through her silver rain; but a wistful spring still held in the thraldom of winter.
"What have you been doing that makes you look a little pale?" asked Hayden tenderly.
"Am I pale?" She smiled at him. "I dare say. I have been painting the greater part of every day and going out a good deal in the evening." ”

“ At last Christine arose, and, crossing the room, stood looking down into the fire. It had darkened, and beyond the zone of the fire glow the shadows had deepened; and in the warmth of this twilight hour the pine and the balsam branches gave out an aromatic fragrance.
“You talked to me of spells yesterday. What spell of music and of Christmas have you woven?” asked Flessing, rising and looking down at her with wondering eyes.
“It is only beginning.” She pointed to a long green candle in a blue pottery candlestick upon the mantelpiece. ”

“ Down low on the mountain the air was mild, there was a soft languor in the touch of the wind on one's cheek; the earth lay in a sort of dreaming brightness, and the hillsides were like vast, changing mosaics of colour, inwrought, overlaid, inlaid with the gold of the aspens, the crimson and flame of the maples, the green gloom of the pines; and from farther purple mountains rose the white peaks, sharply, coldly distinct against the deep, bending blue of the sky.
There are certain temperaments so susceptible to colour that it acts upon them as an intoxicant, and Frances was one of these. ”

“ It was not from curiosity or pity, Cresswell?"
"It was love, Dita."
Again that wave of emotion over her face, and then she looked about her with sad, tear-wet eyes and a trembling mouth.
"And my caprices, my stupidity, my inadequacy, soon destroyed that?"
"Never," he repeated. "Believe that. I was no gardener trying experiments. It was the flower I loved, Dita; the flower whose happiness I longed for, whose happiness I still long for. You do not need my love, do not care for it, why should you? ”