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Kilmeny of the Orchard

of gossip. To her, Lindsay was as much of an unknown world as the city of Eric’s home. Her thoughts strayed far and Wide in the realm of fancy, but they never wan— dered out to the little realities that hedged her strange life around. In that life she had blossomed out, a fair, unique thing. There were times when Eric al- most regretted that one day he must take her out of her white solitude to a world that, in the last analysis, was only Lind- say on a larger scale, with just the same pettiness of thought and feeling and opin- ion at the bottom of it. He wished he might keep her to himself for ever, in that old, spruce-hidden orchard where the roses fell.

One day he indulged himself in the ful— filment of the whim he had formed when Kilmeny had told him she thought her— self ugly. He went to Janet and asked her permission to bring a mirror to the house that he might have the privilege of

being the first to reveal Kilmeny to her- 180