had he turned his back on her? There was nothing in his presence
to alarm, nothing in her appearance to forbid. The motive and the
movement were equally quaint; incomprehensible to him; for after putting
himself out of sight, he understood the absurdity of the supposition
that she would seek the secluded sylvan bath for the same purpose as
he. Yet now he was, debarred from going to meet her. She might have an
impulse to bathe her feet. Her name was Diana....

Yes, and a married woman; and a proclaimed one!

And notwithstanding those brassy facts, he was ready to side with the
evidence declaring her free from stain; and further, to swear that her
blood was Diana's!

Nor had Dacier ever been particularly poetical about women. The present
Diana had wakened his curiosity, had stirred his interest in her,
pricked his admiration, but gradually, until a sleepless night with its
flock of raven-fancies under that dominant Bell, ended by colouring her,
the moment she stood in his eyes, as freshly as the morning heavens.
We are much influenced in youth by sleepless nights: they disarm, they
predispose us to submit to soft occasion; and in our youth occasion is
always coming.

He heard her voice. She had risen up the grass-mound, and he hung
brooding half-way down. She was dressed in some texture of the hue of
lavender. A violet scarf loosely knotted over the bosom opened on her
throat. The loop of her black hair curved under a hat of gray beaver.
Memorably radiant was her face.

They met, exchanged greetings, praised the beauty of the morning, and
struck together on the Bell. She laughed: 'I heard it at ten; I slept
till four. I never wake later. I was out in the air by half-past. Were
you disturbed?'

He alluded to his troubles with the Bell.

'It sounded like a felon's heart in skeleton ribs,' he said.

'Or a proser's tongue in a hollow skull,' said she.

He bowed to her conversible readiness, and at once fell into the
background, as he did only with her, to perform accordant bass in
their dialogue; for when a woman lightly caps our strained remarks, we
gallantly surrender the leadership, lest she should too cuttingly assert
her claim.

Some sweet wild cyclamen flowers were at her breast. She held in
her left hand a bunch of buds and blown cups of the pale purple
meadow-crocus. He admired them. She told him to look round. He confessed
to not having noticed them in the grass: what was the name? Colchicum,
in Botany,