e murmuring
mystery of their branches and leaves, she spied one a little way off
which was very different from all the rest. It was white, and dark, and
sparkling, and spread like a palm--a small slender palm, without much
head; and it grew very fast, and sang as it grew. But it never grew any
bigger, for just as fast as she could see it growing, it kept falling to
pieces. When she got close to it, she discovered it was a water
tree--made of just such water as she washed with, only it was alive, of
course, like the river--a different sort of water from that, doubtless,
seeing the one crept swiftly along the floor, and the other shot
straight up, and fell, and swallowed itself, and rose again. She put her
feet into the marble basin, which was the flower-pot in which it grew.
It was full of real water, living and cool--so nice, for the night was
hot.

But the flowers! ah, the flowers! she was friends with them from the
very first. What wonderful creatures they were!--and so kind and
beautiful--always sending out such colors and such scents--red scent,
and white scent, and yellow scent--for the other creatures! The one that
was invisible and everywhere took such a quantity of their scents, and
carried it away! yet they did not seem to mind. It was their talk, to
show they were alive, and not painted like those on the walls of her
rooms, and on the carpets.

She wandered along down the garden until she reached the river. Unable
then to get any further--for she was a little afraid, and justly, of the
swift watery serpent--she dropped on the grassy bank, dipped her feet in
the water, and felt it running and pushing against them. For a long time
she sat thus, and her bliss seemed complete, as she gazed at the river,
and watched the broken picture of the great lamp overhead, moving up one
side of the roof to go down the other.

XIII.--SOMETHING QUITE NEW.

A beautiful moth brushed across the great blue eyes of Nycteris. She
sprang to her feet to follow it, not in the spirit of the hunter, but of
the lover. Her heart--like every heart, if only its fallen sides were
cleared away--was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved
everything she saw. But as she followed the moth, she caught sight of
something lying on the bank of the river, and not yet having learned to
be afraid of anything, ran straight to see what it was. Reaching it, she
stood amazed. Another girl like herself! But what a strange-looking
girl!--so curious