softly-falling water.

Having advanced a few steps from the door, the Wanderer stood still and
waited, supposing that the owner of the dwelling would be made aware
of a visitor's presence and would soon appear. But no one came. Then
a gentle voice spoke from amidst the verdure, apparently from no great
distance.

"I am here," it said.

He moved forward amidst the ferns and the tall plants, until he found
himself on the farther side of a thick network of creepers. Then he
paused, for he was in the presence of a woman, of her who dwelt among
the flowers. She was sitting before him, motionless and upright in a
high, carved chair, and so placed that the pointed leaves of the palm
which rose above her cast sharp, star-shaped shadows over the broad
folds of her white dress. One hand, as white, as cold, as heavily
perfect as the sculpture of a Praxiteles or a Phidias, rested with
drooping fingers on the arm of the chair. The other pressed the pages
of a great book which lay open on the lady's knee. Her face was turned
toward the visitor, and her eyes examined his face; calmly and with no
surprise in them, but not without a look of interest. Their expression
was at once so unusual, so disquieting, and yet so inexplicably
attractive as to fascinate the Wanderer's gaze. He did not remember that
he had ever seen a pair of eyes of distinctly different colours, the one
of a clear, cold gray, the other of a deep, warm brown, so dark as to
seem almost black, and he would not have believed that nature could so
far transgress the canons of her own art and yet preserve the appearance
of beauty. For the lady was beautiful, from the diadem of her red gold
hair to the proud curve of her fresh young lips; from her broad, pale