their red bottle-brush blossoms into the stream, which just here was dark and rather deep, and swirled in tiny eddies round the twigs and bowed roots. There was just room for one person to sit on the islet. The back of the tree and the twisted roots made a famous arm-chair. A log spanned the stream above the islet, and was used by foot-passengers. Elsie had crossed upon it. Lower down, the creek ran shallower over a bed of stones and rock crystals, and made a pleasant brawling. There was an intense dreaminess in the air, and there was no other sound but the chirping of grass-hoppers, the occasional caw of a cockatoo, or cry of a bird in the scrub close by, and the footsteps of cattle or horses coming down to drink. Elsie was reading the scene in which Edward and Ottilie first discover their love. She put the book down and leaned back against the tree, her cheeks flushed, and a tender smile was upon her lips. She had often read about love, but none that she read of seemed to her so real as this! Should she ever know such love? Was it so rare? Was it possible that in this manner Frank Hallett loved her? Why then was it that she felt no returning throb? Elsie wondered vaguely with some dim faint realization of the greatest of life's mysteries. But it was quite true that she had never loved. People had loved her, but she had never taken much account of what they felt and suffered. It occurred to her now that, perhaps, they had suffered a good deal, and that, perhaps, she might have been kinder.
"I have never taken life seriously enough," Elsie said to herself. "I have never taken love seriously either." And then she laughed softly, as the thought flashed across her how impossible it would be to take some of those bank clerks from the serious standpoint. Life and love had only been a game to Elsie. And yet in the background of her consciousness there had always been a tremendous ideal—so Elsie herself would have phrased it—an image which was sacred, an image of a prince. Only a prince. The Prince had not ridden through the enchanted forest where the princess slept.
