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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"A Spirit in Prison"

She was happy in the coming of summer, and in her
happiness was quite at ease, like a kitten that stretches itself
luxuriously in the sun. To Vere the world never seemed quite awake
till the summer came. Only in the hot sunshine did there glow the
truthfulness and the fulness of life. She shared it with the ginestra.
She saw and felt a certain cruelty in the gold, but she did not fear
or condemn it, or wish it away. For she was very young, and though she
spoke of cruelty she did not really understand it. In it there was
force, and force already appealed to the girl as few things did. As,
long ago, her father had gloried in the coming of summer to the South,
she gloried in it now. She looked across the Pool of the Saint to the
flood of yellow that was like sunlight given a body upon the cliff
opposite, and her soul revelled within her, and her heart rose up and
danced, alone, and yet as if in a glad company of dancers, all of whom
were friends. Her brain, too, sprang to the alert.


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