e rather stood
bathing in the light, motionless but for the lifting of her face into
it that she might dip, or for the bending of her head that the warmth
behind her might strike upon the nape of her neck. Those were all her
movements, slowly rehearsed, and again and again rehearsed. With each
of them she thrilled anew; she thrilled and glowed responsive to the
play of the light. I don't know whether she saw me, though it seemed
to me that our looks had encountered. If her eyes had taken me in I
should have known it, I think; and if I had known it I should have
quailed and looked at her no more. So shamefaced was I, so
self-conscious, that I can be positive about that; for far from
avoiding her I watched her intently, studied her in all her parts, and
found out some curious things.

Looking at her beside the oaks, for instance, whence she must have
emanated, I could judge why it was that I had not seen her come out.
Her colouring was precisely that of her background. Her garment, smock
or frock or vest as you will, was grey-green like the oak stems, her
whites were those of the sky-gleams, her roses those of the sun's
rays. The maze of her hair could hardly be told from the photosphere.
I tested this simply and summarily. Shutting my eyes for a second,
when I opened them she was gone. Shutting them again and opening,
there she was, sunning herself, breathing deep and long, watching her
own beauties as the light played with them. I tried this many times
and it did not fail me. I could, with her assistance, bring her upon
my retina or take her off it, as if I had worked a shutter across my
eyes. But as I watched her so I got very excited. Her business was so
mysterious, her pleasure in it so absorbing; she was visible and yet
secret; I was visible, and yet she could be ignorant of it. I got the
same throbbing sort of interest out of her as many and many a time I
have got since out of watching other wild creatures at their affairs,
crouching hidden where they could not discern me by any of their
senses. Few things enthral me more than that--and here I had my first
taste of it. I remember that my heart beat, I remember that I
trembled. Nothing could have torn me from the spot but what precisely
did, an alien intervention. The besotted Harkness stopped short in
his recital and asked me what I was staring at.

That was the end of it. I had rather have died than tell him. Perhaps
I was afraid of his mockery, perhaps I dared