I had thought, for I had not seen her--you must remember--since. It
seemed to me that in the night she had been recreated, and came forth
fresh as Eve from the Eden sleep. Her eyelashes were so long that they
swept her cheeks; and her eyes, that I had thought to be violet, had now
the sparkle in them which you may see in the depths of the southern sea
just where the sapphire changes into amethyst.

Did we say good-morning? I forget, and it matters little. We were
walking together. How light the air was!--cool and rapturous like
snow-chilled wine that is drunk beneath the rose at thirsty Teheran. The
ground on which we trod, too, how strangely elastic! The pine-trees
give out how good a smell! Is my heart beating at all, or only so fine
and quick that I cannot count its pulsings?

What is she saying--this lady of mine? I am not speaking aloud--only
thinking. Cannot I think?

She told me, I believe, why she had come out. I have forgotten why. It
was her custom thus to walk in the prime. She had still the mantilla
over her head, which, as soon as the sun looked over the eastern crest
of the mountains, she let drop on her shoulders and so walked
bareheaded, with her head carried a trifle to the side and thrown back,
so that her little rounded chin was in the air.

"I have thought," she was saying when I came to myself, "all the night
of what you told me of your home on the hills. It must be happiness of
the greatest and most perfect, to be alone there with the voices of
nature--the birds crying over the heather and the cattle in the fields."

"Good enough," I said, "it is for us moorland folk who know nothing