CHAPTER XIV. 



THE PERFUME OF AN EVENING PRIMROSE. 



I SOMETIMES walk in a large garden where the even- 

 ing 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 woodbine, to keep 

 company there with a few straggling poppies, with 

 hollyhock, red and white foxglove, and other coarse 

 and weed-like plants, all together forming a kind 

 of horizon, dappled with colour, to the garden 

 on that side, a suitable background, to the deli- 

 cate more valued blooms. It has a neglected 

 appearance, its tall straggling stems insufficiently 

 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 Nature 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- 

 hevelled, her mournful eyes fixed ever on the earth 

 where she will shortly be. 



I never pass this weedy, pale-flowered alien with- 



