Cracked of back and solitary of string it was as if her
trembling arms, raising it above her head, would make of themselves and
her swaying body the tripod of an altar. The old twisting and prophetic
pain was behind her heart. Like the painted billows of music that the
old Italian masters loved to do, there wound and wreathed about her
clouds of song.
But I've a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
THE LUBBENY KISS
BY LOUISE RICE
From _Ainslee's Magazine_
For many hours the hot July sun had beaten down upon the upland meadows
and the pine woods of the lower New Jersey hills. So, when the dew began
to fall, there arose from them a heady brew, distilled from blossoming
milkweed and fruiting wild raspberry canes and mountain laurel and dried
pine needles.
The Princess Dora Parse took this perfume into her lusty young lungs and
blew it out again in a long sigh, after which she bent her first finger
over her thumb as one must when one returns what all Romanys know to be
"the breath of God." She did this almost unconsciously, for all her
faculties were busied in another matter.
The eyes of a gorgio, weakened by an indoor life, would never have been
able to distinguish the small object for which the princess looked, for
she was perched up on the high seat of the red Romany _wardo_, and she
drove her two strong, shaggy horses with a free and careless hand.
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