she happened to meet with a young man who
was as different from Pan as any creature could be. Instead of having a
goat's legs and long hairy arms, he was as graceful as Apollo himself:
no horns grew out of his forehead, and his ears were not long, pointed,
and covered with hair, but just like Echo's own. And he was just as
beautiful in face as he was graceful in form. I doubt if Echo would have
thought even Apollo himself so beautiful.

The nymphs were rather shy, and Echo was the very shyest of them all.
But she admired him so much she could not leave the spot, and at last
she even plucked up courage enough to ask him, "What is the name of the
most beautiful being in the whole world?"

"Whom do you mean?" asked he. "Yourself? If you want to know your own
name, you can tell it better than I can."

"No," said Echo, "I don't mean myself. I mean _you_. What is _your_
name?"

"My name is Narcissus," said he. "But as for my being beautiful--that is
absurd."

"Narcissus!" repeated Echo to herself. "It is a beautiful name. Which of
the nymphs have you come to meet here in these woods all alone? She is
lucky--whoever she may be."

"I have come to meet nobody," said Narcissus. "But--am I really so
beautiful? I have often been told so by other girls, of course; but
really it is more than I can quite believe."

"And you don't care for any of those girls?"

"Why, you see," said Narcissus, "when all the girls one knows call one
beautiful, there's no reason why I should care for one more than
another. They all seem alike when they are all always saying just the
same thing. Ah! I do wish I could see myself, so that I could tell if it
was really true. I would marry the girl who could give me the wish of my
heart--to see myself as other people see me. But as nobody can make me
do that, why, I suppose I shall get on very well without marrying
anybody at all."

Looking-glasses had not been invented in those days, so that Narcissus
had really never seen even so much of himself as his chin.

"What!" cried Echo, full of hope and joy; "if I make you see your own
face, you will marry _me_?"

"I said so," said he. "And of course what I say I'll do, I'll do."

"Then--come with me!"

Echo took him by the hand and led him to the edge of a little lake in
the middle of the wood, full of clear water.

"Kneel down, Narcissus," said she, "and bend your eyes over the
waterside. That lake is the mirror where Diana comes every morning t