"Oh!"--cried the girl impulsively, as the beautiful winged creatures
disappeared at last,--"if people could only be like that! It's so hard to
be yourself in the world. Everybody, there, seems trying to be something
they are not. No one dares to be just themselves. Everything, up here, is
so right--so true--so just what it is--and down there, everything tries so
hard to be just what it is not. The world even _sees_ so crooked that it
_can't_ believe when a thing is just what it is."
While watching the butterflies, she had turned away from the artist and,
in following their flight with her eyes, had taken a few light steps that
brought her into the open, grassy center of the glade. With her face
upturned to the opening in the foliage through which the butterflies had
disappeared, she had spoken as if thinking aloud, rather than as
addressing her companion.
Before the artist could reply, the beautiful creatures came floating back
as they had gone. With a low exclamation of delight, the girl watched them
as they circled, now, above her head, in their aerial waltz among the
sunbeams and leafy boughs. Then the man, watching, saw her--unheeding his
presence--stretch her arms upward.
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