dived under the water, or when it spread out like a fan
on the surface.

The eldest, Clothilde, was dark; she was beautiful, but haughty, and
looked as if she had inherited her father's temper.

The youngest was very fair; she had the golden hair of a fairy, her eyes
were blue, but meaningless; there was little sense in their depths. Her
name was Elfrida.

The second sister, Lenore, was of a different type, and might have been
mistaken for a mortal maiden. Her hair was neither dark nor fair,
neither red nor brown, it was of a pale hazel colour and fell in
straight masses nearly to her feet. Her eyes were of a deep grey fringed
with dark lashes; they had a mysterious and pathetic look--a look caused
by longing after something indefinite and yet desired, or by a
prescience perhaps of coming disaster.

Lenore rose to the surface of the water. "Sisters," she called,
"sisters, listen to me," and she swam towards the shade of the rock, and
seated herself on a stony seat, half in half out of the water. "I can
bear the monotony of our existence no longer. I tire of this life of
ceaseless dancing, swimming, drifting. I want to visit the homes of men
who live in the village that lies below us at the foot of the mountain,
to hear stories of the world from which we are shut out, to share as far
as it is possible for us in the simple and homely amusements of
mortals."

"I am willing to go with you," said Clothilde, frowning discontentedly.
"I am tired too of this melancholy lake; the eternal nothingness of our
life oppresses me too." She tore a water-lily to pieces as she spoke.

"O do not do that!" said Lenore, almost as if in pain, "the flowers can
feel too!"

"What if they can!" said Clothilde scornfully; for the cruelty of the
nixies coursed through her veins.

"And you Elfrida," said Lenore, turning to her fairer sister, "will you
come with us?"

"Ah!" said Elfrida, "I prefer to stay here among the water-lilies. I
have no aspirations, I could live here for ever sleeping through the
winter months, dreaming through the summer ones, yet if you go, I will
go too; for we three have never been separated, and I should be afraid
if I were left alone with my father." As she spoke she placed a
water-lily in her golden hair; the sunbeams struck through the fir-trees
by the lake and fell on her, till she looked like some wonderful fairy
princess, too exquisite to be real.

A young man happened to be passing the lake just at th