Then he beckoned me to come away. But the odour was too ravishing, I was
bound to see whence it arose, and finding me deaf to all warnings, the
man reluctantly turned aside down the enticing trail. We pushed about
a hundred yards through bushes until we came to a little arena full in
sunshine where there were neither birds nor butterflies, but a death-like
hush upon everything. Indeed, the place seemed shunned in spite of
the sodden loveliness of that scent which monopolised and mounted to my
brain until I was beginning to be drunk with the sheer pleasure of it.
And there in the centre of the space stood a plant not unlike a tree
fern, about six feet high, and crowned by one huge and lovely blossom.
It resembled a vast passion-flower of incredible splendour. There were
four petals, with points resting on the ground, each six feet long,
ivory-white inside, exquisitely patterned with glittering silver veins.
From the base of these rose upright a gauzy veil of azure filaments of
the same length as the petals, wirelike, yet soft as silk, and inside
them again rested a chalice of silver holding a tiny pool of limpid
golden honey. Circe, indeed! It was from that cup the scent arose,
and my throat grew dry with longing as I looked at it; my eyes strained
through the blue tendrils towards that liquid nectar, and my giddy senses
felt they must drink or die! I glanced at the woodman with a smile
of drunken happiness, then turned tottering legs towards the blossom.
A stride up the smooth causeway of white petals, a push through the azure
haze, and the wine of the wood enchantress would be mine--molten amber
wine, hotter and more golden than the sunshine; the fire of it was in my
veins, the recklessness of intoxication was on me, life itself as nothing
compared to a sip from that chalice, my lips must taste or my soul would
die, and with trembling hand and strained face I began to climb.

But the woodman pulled me back.