MARM LISA

BY
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

The eternal-womanly
Ever leadeth us on.
Goethe’s Faust.

SIXTH EDITION

GAY AND BIRD
22 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
LONDON
1905

All rights reserved

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

CONTENTS

I
EDEN PLACE

Eden Place was a short street running at right angles with Eden Square, a most unattractive and infertile triangle of ground in a most unattractive but respectable quarter of a large city.  It was called a square, not so much, probably, because it was triangular in shape, as because it was hardly large enough to be designated as a park.  As to its being called ‘Eden,’ the origin of that qualifying word is enveloped in mystery; but it is likely that the enthusiastic persons who projected it saw visions and dreamed dreams of green benches under umbrageous trees, of a green wire fence, ever green, and of plots of blossoming flowers filling the grateful air with unaccustomed fragrance.

As a matter of fact, the trees had always been stunted and stubby, the plants had never been tended, and all the paint had been worn off the benches by successive groups of working-men out of work.  As for the wire fence, it had been much used as a means of ingress and egress by the children of