“Vignette.
“Tuesday.

“I stand in the manuka scrub—the fairy blossom.

“Everywhere the broom tosses its golden fragrant plumes into the air. I am on a little rise: to my right, a great tree of Mimosa laden with blossom bends and foams in the breeze. Before me the lake is drowned in the sunset. The distant mountains are silver blue, and the sky first faint rose, then shaded into pale amber.

“Far away on my left the land is heavily shadowed and sharply outlined—fold upon fold of grey cloud….

“A white moth flutters past me. I hear always the whisper of the water.

“I am alone. I am hidden. Life seems to have page 304 passed away—drifted and drifted miles and worlds on beyond the fairy sight.

“Very faint and clear the bird calls and cries—and another on a little scarlet tree close by me answers with an ecstasy of song.

“Then I hear steps approaching. A young Maori girl climbs slowly up the hill. She does not see me. I do not move. She reaches a little knoll and suddenly sits down, native fashion, her legs crossed, her hands clasped in her lap. She is dressed in a blue skirt and a soft white blouse. Round her neck is a piece of twisted flax, and a long piece of greenstone is suspended from it. Her black hair is twisted softly at her neck. She wears long white and red earrings…. She sits silently—utterly motionless—her head thrown back. All the lines of her face are passionate, violent, savage, but in her eyes slumbers a tragic, illimitable Peace.

“The sky changes—softens. The world is all grey mist—the land in heavy shadow—silence in the woods.

“The girl does not move—But very faint, sweet and beautiful—a star wakes in the sky. She is the very incarnation of evening.”