There was a world, I dreamed, where autumn follows summer, and after
autumn, winter. Here it is always June, despite us both."

"What, then, would you have?" I said.

"Ask him," she replied.

But the little god looking sidelong was mute in his grey regard.

"Why do you not run away? What keeps you here?"

"You ask many questions, stranger! Who can escape? To live is to
remember. To die--oh, who would forget! Even had I been weeping, and
not merely mocking time away, would my tears be of Lethe at my mouth's
corners? No," said Anthea, "why feign and lie? All I am is but a
memory lovely with regret."

She rose, and the myrtles concealed her from me. And I, in the midst
of the dusk where the tiny torches burned sadly--I turned to the
sightless eyes of that smiling god.

What he knew, being blind, yet smiling, I seemed to know then. But
that also I have forgotten.

I whistled softly and clearly into the air, and a querulous voice
answered me from afar--the voice of a grasshopper--Rosinante's.