WINTER SKIES 



&quot; Why, of course. Does that make you feel 

 bad?&quot; 



&quot;Yes a little. If it were only the sunshine, 

 one wouldn t care. But everything else goes 

 the same way and leaves us in the cold and 

 dark.&quot; 



&quot; Well, upon my word, I never heard you talk 

 so before. Are you afraid the sun will not come 

 back to-morrow ? &quot; 



&quot; Oh, it will come back, but it will never shine 

 twice on the same conditions. Everything else 

 goes on, too, toward night.&quot; 



&quot; I hope you do not talk that way to your 

 boy.&quot; 



&quot; Would you like me to talk to you as I talk 

 to Charlie ? I am very confidential with him.&quot; 



&quot; No. I think not. I am older than Charlie, 

 and you have taught him to look up to you &quot; 



&quot;Yes, that is true, and I couldn t teach you to 

 look up to me, because in some things you are 

 taller than I am. Do you know, as you stand 

 there now, you seem to be looking down on me ? &quot; 



&quot; I do ? Why, you know so much it frightens 

 me. I don t really know anything.&quot; 



&quot; And that I find gives a certain kind of stature 

 to one. There are some persons, Griselle, who do 

 not know; they just are. It s curious, isn t it, that 

 I should think of you in that way? &quot; 



&quot;Yes, it is. It doesn t sound as if it were quite 





 true. 



How inexpressibly beautiful was the naivete 

 of this girl, listening to the ring of my rhetoric 



287 



