ing to place
there, but of flowers. She wove a crown and laid it at his feet, and,
while she bent by the pedestal, to hang a garland there, oh, terror! a
voice cried, "Evadne! Evadne!" A tide of fear rushed to her heart. The
god stood motionless yet. Who could have uttered her name? A falling
branch, a swift zephyr, may have seemed for an instant articulate, and
yet it was surely a human voice which had called her. Her reverie was
broken now, like a cataract brought to its downfall. A moment since, all
was peace and joyfulness; now she remembered, with alarm, how long she
had left her foster-parents alone, and the way by which she had come was
unknown, as if she had never traced it. She crossed the floor of the
temple, and, as she turned to whisper, "Farewell! beautiful god!" the
form gently inclined itself, and the uplifted hand stirred lightly.
Evadne darted forward and looked no more behind. She bounded over chasms
in the pathway, and broke the tender branches before her with impatient
hands, so that her descent from the temple was one mad flight.

CHAPTER III.

When Evadne returned to Alpheus and to her foster-mother, she was silent
concerning her discovery, and it seemed the more sweet to her for being
secret. Her thoughts made pilgrimages to the temple hidden by the
laurels once set to adorn it, and the deserted God of Youth and Immortal
Beauty drew from her an untaught and voiceless worship. How tedious now
appeared the labors of their half-savage life!--for the ensnaring of
fish and the gathering of fruits for the little household gave the child
no leisure to climb the hill a second time, to seek the lost temple, now
all her own. Two weary days had passed, and on the morning of the third
Evadne performed all her labors, such as they were, of field or of the
house.

Eleusa was absorbed in the art, new to her, of repairing a broken net,
when the child abruptly fled away into the forest, crying out, "I go to
seek wild grapes." She would not hear the voices calling her back. She
gained rapidly the path, already familiar, and wherein every bough and
every leaf seemed expectant of her coming footsteps.

Hamadryads veiled themselves, each in her conscious tree, eluding human
approach. She steals more gently along, that she may haply surprise a
vision. The little grassy plain appears beyond the wavering
oak-branches. It is reached at last, and there,--surely it is no
delusion,--there rests a sleeping youth! Anothe