of all these
colours, and deepening as you gazed up into them into bottomless lakes of
love.

Then her face, framed in a soft darkness, which was hair--the Kid never
knew of what colour--her face formed itself out of the darkness that
framed those eyes, and a warm, balmy breath came nearer, and you were
kissed. No other lips, in your short remembrance, had ever touched you.
You had learned the meaning of a kiss only from her, and hers was so long
and close that your heart left off beating, and only began again when it
was over. Then arms that were soft and warm, and strong and beautiful,
came round you and gathered you in, and you fell asleep folded closely in
them, or you lay awake, and the Lady talked to you in a voice that was
mellow as honey and soft as velvet, and sounded like the cooing of the
wild pigeons that nested in the krantzes, or the sighing of the wind among
the high veld grasses, and the murmur of the little river playing among
the boulders and gurgling between the roots of the tree-fern. You talked,
too, and told her everything. And no matter how bad you had been, though
she was sorry, because she hated badness, she loved you just as dearly as
she did when you were good. And oh! how you loved her--how you loved her!

"Please," you said that night when she came first--you remember it quite
well, though it is so long ago--"please, why did you never come before?"

And she answered, with her cool, sweet, fragrant lips upon your eyelids,
and your head upon her breast:

"Because you never wanted me so much as now."

"Please take me back home with you," you begged, holding her fast. And she
answered in the voice that is always like the sigh of the wind amongst the
tree-tops and the murmur of the river:

"I cannot yet--but I will come again."

And she does come, and again and again. By degrees, though she comes to
you only at night, when the outhouse is dark, or lighted only by the stars
or the moonshine, you learn exactly what the Lady is like.

She wears a silken, softly-rustling gown that is of any lovely colour you
choose. The hue of the blue overarching sky at midday, or the tender rose
of dawn, or of the violet clouds that bar the flaming orange-ruby of the
sunset: or the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment is
sable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders and the splendid
pillar of her throat reveal the beauty of her form even to the eyes of an
untaught, neglected child.