ouldering fire. So we went over the house, and I
chose the rooms where I would live; and the servants I had brought with
me ordered and arranged everything, and I had no more trouble. I did not
care what they did provided I was left in peace, and was not expected to
give directions; for I was more listless than ever, owing to the effects
of my illness at college.

I dined in solitary state, and the melancholy grandeur of the vast old
dining-room pleased me. Then I went to the room I had selected for my
study, and sat down in a deep chair, under a bright light, to think, or
to let my thoughts meander through labyrinths of their own choosing,
utterly indifferent to the course they might take.

The tall windows of the room opened to the level of the ground upon the
terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and
everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard
the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of
the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and
sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian
flower-pots. The air was deliciously soft and sweet with the smell of
the flowers, and the garden was more congenial to me than the house. Sad
people always like running water and the sound of it at night, though I
cannot tell why. I sat and listened in the gloom, for it was dark below,
and the pale moon had not yet climbed over the hills in front of me,
though all the air above was light with her rising beams. Slowly the
white halo in the eastern sky ascended in an arch above the wooded
crests, making the outlines of the mountains more intensely black by
contrast, as though the head of some great white saint were rising from
behind a screen in a vast cathedral, throwing misty glories from below.
I longed to see the moon herself, and I tried to reckon the seconds
before she must appear. Then she sprang up quickly, and in a moment more
hung round and perfect in the sky. I gazed at her, and then at the
floating spray of the tall fountains, and down at the pools, where the
water-lilies were rocking softly in their sleep on the velvet surface of
the moon-lit water. Just then a great swan floated out silently into
the midst of the basin, and wreathed his long neck, catching the water
in his broad bill, and scattering showers of diamonds around him.

Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I looked
up insta