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- 
