Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LOST CHORDS WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO GEORGE EGERTON, AUTHOR OF " DISCORDS." SHE sits on a fallen log by the banks of a tumbling mountain brook; the air is filled with the odor of fir, and the glint of sunshine is on the moss, and in her gray eyes, and upon her bronze-gold hair. This unequalled combination of moss and sunshine and feminine loveliness is enough to stir to its depths the heart of any man. How much more the heart of the impressionable poet at her feet! " You see in me," she said to him, in her trumpet- voice, " the embodiment of the new idea of womanhood. Once my life was nearly wrecked by ' ignorant innocence.' I've risen to my present serene altitude by a thorough course of'all-seeing knowledge. ' When I say knowledge you must understand that I refer to all the evil and wickedness in which men are habitually engaged. A three-years' course in the study of vice has, it is true, disillusionized me —but it has made me strong ! '' As she said this she tossed a bowlder into the tumbling stream with her left hand, then placidly brushed the dust from her great fingers with one of the ribbons of her very simple, but perfectly correct, Paris-made gown. '' Tell me,'' asked the poet, with beseeching eyes, " what are all these vicious things that I must understand before I can be strong ? Pity my ignorance. You know that I have been five years at Eton, where I was captain of our football team, and four years at Oxford, where I was stroke of the 'Varsity crew—but what I know is nothing when compared to you. Vice and wickedness are neither required nor elective at Oxford. Please pity me ! You know that I have no sister to warn me of the cruel and wicked world." " Poor fellow ! " she replied, softening her voice to the mellow tones of thunder. " How many promising ...