d and drew into her own spirit the calm and
silence of the place, and she was in turn absorbed and drawn into the
majestic life around her. The distinctively human seemed to slip from
her like a garment, and she was transformed into a creature of these
solitudes. Her movements resembled those of a fawn. Her great,
gazelle-like eyes peered hither and thither, as if ever upon the watch
for some hidden foe. It was as if her life in the habitations of men had
been an enforced exile, and she had now returned to her native haunts.

As she penetrated more and more deeply into the wood, her confidence
increased; she stepped more firmly, removed her hat, shook out her long
black tresses, listened to the songs of birds piping in the tops of
trees, and exulted in the consciousness of freedom and of kinship with
these natural objects. With a sudden and impulsive movement, she drew
near to the smooth trunk of a great beech, put her arms around it, laid
her cheek against it and kissed the bark. She was prompted by the same
instinct which made St. Francis de Assisi call the flowers "our little
sisters,--" an inexplicable sense of companionship and fraternity with
living things of every kind.

Her swift footsteps brought her at last to the summit of a low line of
hills, and she glided down into an unpeopled and shadow-haunted valley
through which ran a crystal stream. Perceiving the fitness of the place
for her purpose, she hastened forward smiling, and, heated with her
journey, threw herself down by the side of the brook and plunged her
face into its cool and sparkling waters. Then she lifted her head and
carried the water to her lips in the palm of her dainty hand, and as she
drank beheld the image of her face on the surface of a quiet little
pool. Small wonder that she stooped to kiss the red lips which were
mirrored there! So did the fair Greek maidens discover and pay tribute
to their own loveliness, in the pure springs of Hellas.

Refreshed by the cooling draught, the priestess now addressed herself to
her task. Gazing for an instant around the majestic temple in which her
act of worship was to be performed, she began like some child of a long
gone age to rear an altar. Selecting a few from the many boulders that
were strewn along the edge of the stream, she arranged them so as to
make an elevated platform upon which she heaped dry leaves, brushwood
and dead branches. Over it she suspended a tripod of sticks, and from
this hung