The Romance of a Water-Lily. 113

 

unscalable face, the tale ran that fairies dwelt in a
secret cave; the gentler slopes, vine-clad and fertile,
that led to his own village ; and, beyond the strange
vision, a long stretch of plain over which the phantom
vapour floated finely, suffused by the golden moon-
shine, floated around the spectral poplars, floated
nearly as far as where the rushing Rhone thundered
faintly in the distance down the gorge of the
mountains, Yes; it was all as he knew it, only more
spectral, more uncanny. But the figure——

Yet as he wondered, she spoke, and as she spoke
he saw that her eyes, too, were green—green as
emeralds, green as the rushes than which she was
straighter and more lithe, green as the rippling water
where they grew.

“ How dare you pluck my flowers?” she said, with
a sort of half inconsequent imperiousness—and the
voice, too, was sweet as the ripples—the voice of a
young girl, and she shook the water from her like
diamonds as she stretched forth a slender arm from
her green draperies and pointed it at him.