efore.

Above the bushes there was a zone of rock, broken in places into huge
boulders, and then between this and the cone was the sulphur field,
glowing, now that I was near enough to see it, with a richness of
colouring such as no painter's palette could reproduce. From darkest
green to deepest blue, through all the tints and shades of yellow,
the colour scheme went, with here and there a touch of rose.

I had stopped a moment to get breath and to gaze at the wonderful
scene before me when there came into it and stood still between two
great rocks, as a living picture might have stepped up into its frame,
a woman, the strangest to look at that I have ever seen.

She was young and slender. She was dressed in a simple, dark-brown,
hemp-cloth garment which fell from neck to feet, and her round young
arms were bare to the shoulder.

It took me a full minute, before I could realize what it was which
made her look so strange to me.

Then I knew. It had been so long since I had seen a white woman that
I did not know one when I saw her.

This woman's face and arms were as white as mine--much whiter, indeed,
for I was tanned by months of Asiatic sun--and the hair which fell
about her shoulders and down below her waist, was white;--not light,
or golden, but white.

For once in my life, I am willing to confess, my nerves went back on
me; and I could think of nothing but what the natives in the village
at the foot of the mountain had told me. Pythons and man-apes and
devils I had seen no trace of, but here, beyond question, was the
"Spirit of the Mountain."

A stout, pointed staff of iron-wood, which I had been carrying to
help me in my scramble up the mountain, slipped from my hand and fell
clattering to the rocks. The woman turned her head toward the spot from
which the sound had come, as if she heard the noise of the stick upon
the stones, but although we were only a little way from each other,
there was no expression in her face to indicate that she saw me.

Then she spoke.

"Madre!"

There was no answer, and she called again, clearer and louder.

"Ma-dre!"

There was a sound of swift steps on the stones, and a moment later
another woman--an older woman--came from behind one of the rocks.

As if in answer to some question in the girl's face, the woman looked
down and saw me.

In an instant she had sprung before the younger woman, as if to hide
her from me.

There are some women in the world whose very ma