e time she seemed more sedate than usual. Perhaps that
was because a great pleasure spoils laughing. At all events, after
this, the passion of her life was to get into the water, and she was
always the better behaved and the more beautiful the more she had of
it. Summer and winter it was quite the same; only she could not stay so
long in the water when they had to break the ice to let her in. Any
day, from morning till evening in summer, she might be descried--a
streak of white in the blue water--lying as still as the shadow of a
cloud, or shooting along like a dolphin; disappearing, and coming up
again far off, just where one did not expect her. She would have been
in the lake of a night, too, if she could have had her way; for the
balcony of her window overhung a deep pool in it; and through a shallow
reedy passage she could have swum out into the wide wet water, and no
one would have been any the wiser. Indeed, when she happened to wake in
the moonlight she could hardly resist the temptation. But there was the
sad difficulty of getting into it. She had as great a dread of the air
as some children have of the water. For the slightest gust of wind
would blow her away; and a gust might arise in the stillest moment. And
if she gave herself a push towards the water and just failed of
reaching it, her situation would be dreadfully awkward, irrespective of
the wind; for at best there she would have to remain, suspended in her
night-gown, till she was seen and angled for by someone from the
window.

"Oh! if I had my gravity," thought she, contemplating the water, "I
would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into
the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!"

This was the only consideration that made her wish to be like other
people.

Another reason for her being fond of the water was that in it alone she
enjoyed any freedom. For she could not walk out without a _cortege_,
consisting in part of a troop of light horse, for fear of the liberties
which the wind might take with her. And the king grew more apprehensive
with increasing years, till at last he would not allow her to walk
abroad at all without some twenty silken cords fastened to as many
parts of her dress, and held by twenty noblemen. Of course horseback
was out of the question. But she bade good-bye to all this ceremony
when she got into the water.

And so remarkable were its effects upon her, especially in restoring
her for the time to the ordinary h