By and by, his own mood seemed to brighten Miriam's, and was reflected
back upon himself. He began inevitably, as it were, to dance along
the wood-path; flinging himself into attitudes of strange comic grace.
Often, too, he ran a little way in advance of his companion, and then
stood to watch her as she approached along the shadowy and sun-fleckered
path. With every step she took, he expressed his joy at her nearer
and nearer presence by what might be thought an extravagance of
gesticulation, but which doubtless was the language of the natural man,
though laid aside and forgotten by other men, now that words have been
feebly substituted in the place of signs and symbols. He gave Miriam the
idea of a being not precisely man, nor yet a child, but, in a high and
beautiful sense, an animal, a creature in a state of development less
than what mankind has attained, yet the more perfect within itself
for that very deficiency. This idea filled her mobile imagination with
agreeable fantasies, which, after smiling at them herself, she tried to
convey to the young man.

"What are you, my friend?" she exclaimed, always keeping in mind his
singular resemblance to the Faun of the Capitol. "If you are, in good
truth, that wild and pleasant creature whose face you wear, pray make me
known to your kindred. They will be found hereabouts, if anywhere. Knock
at the rough rind of this ilex-tree, and summon forth the Dryad! Ask the
water-nymph to rise dripping from yonder fountain, and exchange a moist
pressure of the hand with me! Do not fear that I shall shrink; even if
one of your rough cousins, a hairy Satyr, should come capering on his
goat-legs out of the haunts of far antiquity, and propose to dance with
me among these lawns! And will not Bacchus,--with whom you consorted so
familiarly of old, and who loved you so well,--will he not meet us here,
and squeeze rich grapes into his cup for you and me?"