by the thicket's edge, disrobed entirely and
came back to the water as lovely as the dream of any ancient sculptor,
as alluring as the finest fancy of the greatest painter who has ever
touched a brush.

Slim, graceful, sinuous, utterly unconscious of her loveliness, but
palpitating with the sensuous joy of living, she might have been a wood
nymph, issuing vivid, vital, from the fancy of a mediaeval poet. The
sunlight flecked her beautiful young body with fluttering patches as of
palpitant gold leaf. The crystal water splashed in answer to the play of
her lithe limbs and fell about her as in showers of diamonds. Flowers
and ferns upon the pool's edge, caught by the little waves of overflow,
her sport sent shoreward, bowed to her as in a merry homage to her
grace, her fitness for the spot and for the sport to which she now
abandoned herself utterly, plunging gaily into the deepest waters of the
basin. From side to side of its narrow depths she sped rapidly, the
blue-white of the spring water showing her lithe limbs in perfect grace
of motion made mystically indefinite and shimmering by refraction
through the little rippling waves her progress raised. She raced and
strained, from the pure love of effort, as if a stake of magnitude
depended on her speed.

Then, suddenly, this fever for fast movement left her and she slowed to
languorous movement, no less lovely.

The trout, which had been frightened into hiding by the splashing of her
early progress, came timidly, again, from their dim lurking places, to
eye this new companion of the bath with less distrust, more curiosity.
With sinuous stroke, so slow it scarcely made a ripple, so strong it
sent her steadily and firmly on her zig-zag way, she swam, now, back and
forth, around about, from side to side and end to end in the deep pool,
with keen enjoyment, each movement a new loveliness, each second
bringing to her fascinating face some new expression of delight and
satisfaction. Behind her streamed her flowing hair, unbound and free to
ripple, fan-like, on the water; before her dainty chin a little wave
progressed, unbreaking, running back on either hand beside her,
V-shaped. Her hands rose in the water, caught it in cupped palms and
pushed it down and backward with the splashless pulsing thrust of the
truly expert swimmer.

Only the warm blood of perfect health could have endured the temperature
of that shaded mountain pool so long, and soon even she felt its chill
gri