sweet with the smell of the flowers, and the garden was more
congenial to me than the house. Sad people always like running
water and the sound of it at night, though I cannot tell why. I
sat and listened in the gloom, for it was dark below, and the pale
moon had not yet climbed over the hills in front of me, though all
the air above was light with her rising beams. Slowly the white
halo in the eastern sky ascended in an arch above the wooded
crests, making the outlines of the mountains more intensely black
by contrast, as though the head of some great white saint were
rising from behind a screen in a vast cathedral, throwing misty
glories from below. I longed to see the moon herself, and I tried
to reckon the seconds before she must appear. Then she sprang up
quickly, and in a moment more hung round and perfect in the sky. I
gazed at her, and then at the floating spray of the tall fountains,
and down at the pools, where the water lilies were rocking softly
in their sleep on the velvet surface of the moonlit water. Just
then a great swan floated out silently into the midst of the basin,
and wreathed his long neck, catching the water in his broad bill,
and scattering showers of diamonds around him.

Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I
looked up instantly. Between me and the round disk of the moon
rose a luminous face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a
woman's mouth, full and soft, but not smiling, hooded in black,
staring at me as I sat still upon my bench. She was close to me--
so close that I could have touched her with my hand. But I was
transfixed and helpless. She stood still for a moment, but her
expression did not change. Then she passed swiftly away, and my
hair stood up on my head, while the cold breeze from her white
dress was wafted to my temples as she moved. The moonlight,