head to foot swathed in
filmy blue--a pale green-blue, the colour of ocean water seen from
below. Translucent webbery, whatever it was, it showed her beneath it
as bare as Venus was when she fared forth unblemished from the sea.
Her pale yellow hair was coiled above her head; her face looked mild
and radiant with a health few Londoners know. Her head was bent in a
considering way; she stood as one who is about to plunge into deep
water, and stands hesitating at the shock. Once or twice she turned
her face up, to bathe it in the light. I saw that in it which in human
faces I had never seen--communion with things hidden from men, secret
knowledge shared with secret beings, assurance of power above our
hopes.

Breathless I watched her, the drab of my daily observation, radiant
now; then as I watched she stretched out her arms and bent them
together like a shield so that her burning face was hidden from me,
and without falter or fury launched herself into the air, and dropt
slowly down out of my sight.

Exactly so she did it. As we may see a pigeon or chough high on the
verge of a sea-cliff float out into the blue leagues of the air, and
drift motionless and light--or descend to the sea less by gravity than
at will--so did she. There was nothing premeditated, there was nothing
determined on: mood was immediately translated into ability--she was
at will lighter or heavier than the air. It was so done that here was
no shock at all--she in herself foreshadowed the power she had.
Rather, it would have been strange to me if, irradiated, transplendent
as she was, she had not considered her freedom and on the instant
indulged it. I accepted her upon her face value without question--I
did not run out to spy upon her. _Ecce unus fortior me!_

In this case, being still new to the life into which I was gradually
being drawn, it did not for one moment occur to me to start an
adventure of my own. I might have accosted the woman, who was, as the
saying goes, anybody's familiar; or I might have spied for another
excursion of her spirit, and, with all preparation made, have followed
her. But I did neither of these things at the time. I saw her next
day leaning bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair in
curl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most London
women of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she was
coarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign upon
her but told of h