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I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when

they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them

not." At another time, remembering how his life had once a

different shape, he will say, "Many an hour I have spent in the

strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my

playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him; and I know

not why this sudden call to what useless inconsequence." An

innocence, a simplicity that one does not find elsewhere in

literature makes the birds and the leaves seem as near to him as

they are near to children, and the changes of the seasons great

events as before our thoughts had arisen between them and us. At

times I wonder if he has it from the literature of Bengal or from

religion, and at other times, remembering the birds alighting on

his brother's hands, I find pleasure in thinking it hereditary, a

mystery that was growing through the centuries like the courtesy

of a Tristan or a Pelanore.