The Burning Glass — Marjorie Bowen

On a May evening a woman was walking in a delicious garden that was formed out of the little islands on the waters of the Seine, near Paris. There was a number of people moving about among the lofty elms, Italian poplars and weeping willows that seemed as if untouched by Art, and yet which had been cunningly disposed by the hand of man, for the owner of this pleasant place was holding one of those fêtes which had become recently so fashionable in the capital. But this woman walked alone. She was very famous, very sought after, and generally the centre of a brilliant company; but to-night she had fled all her usual associates for that part of the island farthest from the chateau, where she might hope to be undisturbed. For her heart was full of sad emotions and a passionate melancholy pervaded her being. Solitude and the sweetness of the hour in some degree soothed her; she walked yet farther away from the festivities, and the lamps and music, and at last stood at the edge of the island and paused, looking across the darkening river towards the ferry house at Bezons, where the boats waited to take away the guests of M. Watelet. The evening was warm and perfumed by the first divine freshness of spring, a few stars were out in a sky that was fading to a translucent green hue; these sparkled in their crystal colours and pure brightness as if they pulsed with intense vitality. A low breeze ruffled the waters of the Seine and sent little waves to break against the flowery banks of M. Watelet's domain. All, in deference to that passion for nature which was the reaction after centuries of artificiality, the nostalgia of a society too highly cultured, over-civilised, was studiously arranged to appear a piece of untouched country. Wild flowers grew among the tall grasses, humble herbs mingled with costly shrubs, the worldling's conception of rusticity was visible in the toy summerhouses and wooden bridges and seats. It was all exquisite -- and as false to nature as the stiff Italian gardens of a preceding fashion. The lonely guest standing looking wistfully out across the water, knew this. She could remember the country in her childhood, the gloom, the poverty, the cruelty, the immensity of it -- so different from this pretty arrangement of trees and flowers, the result of a wealthy man's taste and intelligence, the whim of an artist jaded with city pleasures. The woman shivered, and turned away from the edges of the river to a weeping willow that drooped its budding foliage over a wooden bench. There she seated herself and stared through the lovely interlacing branches at the stars that seemed to hang so low, that she had the illusion that if she put out her hand she could catch hold of one entangled in the willow boughs. Silent she sat, fighting with her melancholy, while the pearl-pure light faded about the island.