a landslip from the height he had hugged, to the open
space of shadowed undulations, and soon had his feet on turf. Heights to
right and to left, and between them, aloft, a sky the rosy wheelcourse of
the chariot of morn, and below, among the knolls, choice of sheltered
nooks where waters whispered of secresy to satisfy Diana herself. They
have that whisper and waving of secresy in secret scenery; they beckon to
the bath; and they conjure classic visions of the pudency of the Goddess
irate or unsighted. The semi-mythological state of mind, built of old
images and favouring haunts, was known to Dacier. The name of Diana,
playing vaguely on his consciousness, helped to it. He had no definite
thought of the mortal woman when the highest grass-roll near the rock
gave him view of a bowered source and of a pool under a chain of
cascades, bounded by polished shelves and slabs. The very spot for him,
he decided at the first peep; and at the second, with fingers
instinctively loosening his waist-coat buttons for a commencement, he
shouldered round and strolled away, though not at a rapid pace, nor far
before he halted.

That it could be no other than she, the figure he had seen standing
beside the pool, he was sure. Why had he turned? Thoughts thick and swift
as a blush in the cheeks of seventeen overcame him; and queen of all, the
thought bringing the picture of this mountain-solitude to vindicate a
woman shamefully assailed.--She who found her pleasure in these haunts of
nymph and Goddess, at the fresh cold bosom of nature, must be clear as
day. She trusted herself to the loneliness here, and to the honour of
men, from a like irreflective sincereness. She was unable to imagine
danger where her own impelling thirst was pure. . .

The thoughts, it will be discerned, were but flashes of a momentary vivid
sensibility. Where a woman's charm has won half the battle, her character
is an advancing standard and sings victory, let her do no more than take
a quiet morning walk before breakfast.

But why had he turned his back on her? There was nothing in his presence
to alarm, nothing in her appearance to forbid. The motive and the
movement were equally quaint; incomprehensible to him; for after putting
himself out of sight, he understood the absurdity of the supposition that
she would seek the secluded sylvan bath for the same purpose as he. Yet
now he was, debarred from going to meet her. She might have an impulse to
bathe her feet.