Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul.

by Wilhelmine von Hillern

"Do you know Faust?"

"No. We were never allowed to read Goethe."

"Your namesake in Faust plucks off the leaves of a daisy, to answer a question that she puts it, but the question is a different one."

"What is it?"

"She asks whether she is beloved."

Gretchen looked down.

"Did you never put that question?"

"How could I? I was sure that my father, my teachers and friends loved me, and I knew no one else."

"And yet you must often have consulted your flower oracle?"

"Oh, yes. There was plenty to ask,--whether I was to take the first, second, or third rank in the examination,--whether I was to have a letter from my father that day,--and ever so many things besides. But that is all over. There are few flowers or questions for me now."