going from the house of
an Austrian woman and worse!"

She was too winningly imperious to fail. I delayed, and together we
looked out on the rosy sky.

"Come down," she said at last, "and on an arbor-moss the sun shall
drowse you, the flower-scents be your opiates, the birds your lullaby,
and I your guard."

We went, and, wandering again through the garden-paths, she brushed
the dew with her trailing festal garments, and plucked the great blue
convolvuli to crown her forehead. Soon, on a plot of Roman violets,
screened by tall trees and trellises, we breakfasted. One might have
said that the cloth was laid above giant mushroom-stems, the service
acorn-cups and calices of milky blooms; golden was the honey-comb we
broke, manna was our bread; she caught the water in her hand from the
fountain and pledged me, and swift as sunshine I bent forward and
prevented the thirsty lips. Then she laid my head on her shoulder, with
her cool finger-tips she stroked the temples and soothed the lids,
they fell and closed on the vision bending above me,--loveliness like
painting, pallor that was waxen, yellow tresses wreathed with azure
stars, eyes that caught the hue again and absorbed all Tyrian dyes.

The plash and bubble of waters swooned dreamily about my ears, and far
off it seemed I heard the wild, sad songs of her native land, that now
in tinkling tune, and now in long, slow rise and fall of mellow sound,
swathed me with sweet satiety to dreamless rest.

The sun stole round and rose above the screen of trees at last and woke
me. I was alone, the silent statues looked on me, the breath of the dark
violets crushed by my weight rose in shrouding incense. I lifted myself
and searched for her, and asked why I must needs believe each hour of
joy a dream,--then went and cooled my brow in the lucent basin at hand,
and waited till she came, in changed raiment, and gliding toward me as
the Spirit of Noon might have come. She led me in, well refreshed, and
in the cool north rooms of the palace the warm hours of the day slipped
like beads from a leash. It scarcely seemed her fingers that touched the
harp to tune, but as if some herald of sirocco, some faint, hot breeze,
had brushed between the strings. It scarcely seemed her voice that
talked to me, but something distant as the tone in a sad sea-shell. What
I said I knew not; I was in a maze, bewildered with bliss; I only knew I
loved her, I only felt my joy.

She told me many things: