there, and everywhere, Light
streaks, like transparent bluish-green gauze, often ran through the
darker surface, which resembled a purplish-blue mantle of some costly
Phoenician stuff; the waves could flash black as the eye of night, and
white as Leucothea's neck.

Then Amphitrite appeared, with floating hair and resonant voice, and
beside her Poseidon with his four steeds.

Frowning sullenly, he struck them sharply with his lash, which whistled
through the air, and angrily thrust his trident deep into the sea.
Instantly the waves took hues of lighter brown, deeper yellow, and
cloudy gray, and the sea wore the aspect of a shallow pond with muddy
bottom, into which workmen hurl blocks of stone. The purity of the
water was sadly dimmed, and the billows dashed foaming toward the sky,
threatening in their violent assault to shatter the marble dike erected
along the shore. The Nereids, trembling, took refuge in the ever-calm
depths, the Tritons no longer used their hollow shells to blow gentle
harmonies; nay, they sent forth crashing war-songs, as if some hostile
citadel were to be assailed; while Amphitrite thrust both hands into her
long, fluttering hair, and with out-stretched head uttered her furious
roar.

But to-day the sea was calm, and when Xanthe had reached the spring
the edges of the milk-white, light, fleecy clouds, towering one above
another on the summits of the loftier mountains, were still glowing with
a rosy light. It was the edge of the garment of the vanishing Eos, the
leaves of the blossoms scattered by the Hours in the pathway of the four
steeds of Helios, as they rose from the waves.

To day and at this hour the morning sunlight fell serenely on the tall
cypresses upon the hill, the trees in the garden swayed in the soft
breath of the morning breeze, and Xanthe nodded to them, for she thought
the beautiful Dryads living in the trees were greeting each other.

Often, with a brief prayer, she laid flowers or a round cake on the
altar that stood beside her seat, and which her ancestor had erected to
the nymph of the spring--but today she had not come for this.

Then what brought her to the hill so early? Did she visit the spring to
admire her own image in its mirror-like surface?

At home she was rarely permitted such an indulgence, for, whenever she
looked in the polished metal-disk, Semestre used to say:

"If a girl often peers into such useless things, she'll certainly see a
fool's image in th