CHAPTER XIV 



THE PERFUME OF AN EVENING 

 PRIMROSE 



T SOMETIMES walk in a large garden where 

 * the evening primrose is permitted to grow, 

 but only at the extreme end of the ground, thrust 

 away, as it were, back against the unkept edge 

 with its pretty tangle of thorn, briar, and wood- 

 bine, to keep company there with a few straggling 

 poppies, with hollyhock, red and white foxglove, 

 and other coarse and weed-like plants, all togeth- 

 er forming a kind of horizon, dappled with color, 

 to the garden on that side, a suitable background 

 to the delicate more valued blooms. It has a neg- 

 lected appearance, its tall straggling stems insuffi- 

 ciently clothed with leaves, leaning away from 

 contact with the hedge; a plant of somewhat 

 melancholy aspect, suggesting to a fanciful mind 

 the image of a maiden originally intended by Na- 

 ture to be her most perfect type of grace and 

 ethereal loveliness, but who soon out-grew her 

 strength with all beauty of form, and who now 

 wanders abroad, careless of appearances, in a 

 faded flimsy garment, her fair yellow hair dis- 



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