Isn't that beautiful? said Owen, pointing to it with the air of a man who puts a certain conversation behind him. It's so beautiful that it hurts me, said Anne softly. Perfect things like that always did hurt me—I remember I called it 'the queer ache' when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection? Is it the pain of finality—when we realise that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression? Perhaps, said Owen dreamily, it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection. You seem to have a cold in the head. Better rub some tallow on your nose when you go to bed, said Miss Cornelia, who had come in through the little gate between the firs in time to catch Owen's last remark. Miss Cornelia liked Owen; but it was a matter of principle with her to visit any high-falutin language from a man with a snub. Miss Cornelia personated the comedy that ever peeps around the corner at the tragedy of life. Ch. 26