to a spot by the river, where was a place called the Rest of the
Flaxbeaters. It was an overhanging rock which made a kind of canopy over
a sweet spring, where, in the days when their labours sounded through the
valley, the flaxbeaters from the level below came to eat their meals and
to rest.

This had always been a resort for her in the months when the flax-beaters
did not use it. Since a child she had made the place her own. To this
day it is called Rosalie's Dell; for are not her sorrows and joys still
told by those who knew and loved her? and is not the parish still
fragrant with her name? Has not her history become a living legend a
thousand times told?

Leaving the village behind her, Rosalie passed down the high-road till
she came to a path that led off through a grove of scattered pines.
There would be yet a half-hour's sun and then a short twilight, and the
river and the woods and the Rest of the Flax-beaters would be her own;
and she could think of the wonderful thing come upon her. She had
brought with her a book of English poems, and as she went through the
grove she opened it, and in her pretty English repeated over and over to
herself:

"My heart is thine, and soul and body render
Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall:
Take all, dear love! thou art my life's defender;
Speak to my soul! Take life and love; take all!"

She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of her
own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it
exaltation. The touch had come.