n intellectual or
studious man. She was a wild, solitary girl of the woods, and did not
understand the language of the country in which I had addressed her.
What inner or mind life could such a one have more than that of any wild
animal existing in the same conditions? Yet looking at her face it
was not possible to doubt its intelligence. This union in her of two
opposite qualities, which, with us, cannot or do not exist together,
although so novel, yet struck me as the girl's principal charm. Why had
Nature not done this before--why in all others does the brightness of
the mind dim that beautiful physical brightness which the wild animals
have? But enough for me that that which no man had ever looked for or
hoped to find existed here; that through that unfamiliar lustre of the
wild life shone the spiritualizing light of mind that made us kin.

These thoughts passed swiftly through my brain as I stood feasting my
sight on her bright, piquant face; while she on her part gazed back
into my eyes, not only with fearless curiosity, but with a look of
recognition and pleasure at the encounter so unmistakably friendly that,
encouraged by it, I took her arm in my hand, moving at the same time a
little nearer to her. At that moment a swift, startled expression came
into her eyes; she glanced down and up again into my face; her lips
trembled and slightly parted as she murmured some sorrowful sounds in a
tone so low as to be only just audible.

Thinking she had become alarmed and was on the point of escaping out of
my hands, and fearing, above all things, to lose sight of her again so
soon, I slipped my arm around her slender body to detain her, moving
one foot at the same time to balance myself; and at that moment I felt
a slight blow and a sharp burning sensation shoot into my leg, so sudden
and intense that I dropped my arm, at the same time uttering a cry of
pain, and recoiled one or two paces from her. But she stirred not when
I released her; her eyes followed my movements; then she glanced down at
her feet. I followed her look, and figure to yourself my horror when I
saw there the serpent I had so completely forgotten, and which even that
sting of sharp pain had not brought back to remembrance! There it lay,
a coil of its own thrown round one of her ankles, and its head, raised
nearly a foot high, swaying slowly from side to side, while the swift
forked tongue flickered continuously. Then--only then--I knew what had
happene