r brown limbs, and her gleaming,
slanting eyes? Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this elf-thing
swinging there, entwined with boughs and the dark water, and covered with
a shift of wet birch leaves. So strange a face she had, wild, almost
wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could not take my eyes from. Her
bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked up drops of water that fell
on the boy's face.

From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as wild
as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her feet. I
wanted to cry to him: "Go back, boy, go back!" but could not; her elf
eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender wildness.

And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling in
deep water beneath her feet. What a gaze was that he was turning up to
her--not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how
triumphant, and how happy!

And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and climbed; and bending down,
she drew him up to her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing of boughs.

I took a long breath then. An orange gleam of sunlight had flamed in
among the shadows and fell round those two where they swung over the dark
water, with lips close together and spirits lost in one another's, and in
their eyes such drowning ecstasy! And then they kissed! All round me
pool, and leaves, and air seemed suddenly to swirl and melt--I could see
nothing plain! . . . What time passed--I do not know--before their
faces slowly again became visible! His face the sober boy's--was turned
away from her, and he was listening; for above the whispering of leaves a
sound of weeping came from over the hill. It was to that he listened.

And even as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the
pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in
her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him
back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it
could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she
watched him abandon her.

Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and lay there, breathless. And
still that sound of lonely weeping came from over the hill.

Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning eyes that never moved from
him, he lay. Once he turned back toward the water, but fire had died
within him; his hands dropped, nerveless--his young face was all
bewild