r park,
near the bottom where there are high grass-growths and ferny luxuriance
between the close tree-trunks, and shadow, and the broken wall of an old
funeral-kiosk sunk aslant under moss, creepers, and wild flowers, behind
which I peeped hidden and wet with dew. She has had the assurance to
modify the dress I put upon her, and was herself a butterfly, for
instead of the shintiyan, she had on a zouave, hardly reaching to the
waist, of saffron satin, no feredje, but a scarlet fez with violet
tassel, and baggy pantaloons of azure silk; down her back the long
auburn plait, quite neat, but all her front hair loose and wanton, the
fez cocked backward, while I caught glimpses of her fugitive heels
lifting out of the dropping slipper-sole. She is pretty clever, but not
clever enough, for that butterfly escaped, and in one instant I saw her
change into weary and sad, for on this earth is nothing more fickle than
that Proteus face, which resembles a landscape swept with cloud-shadows
on a bright day. Fast beat my heart that morning, owing to the
consciousness that, while I saw, I was unseen, yet might be seen.

Another noontide, three weeks afterwards, I came upon her a good way up
yonder to the west of the palace, sleeping on her arm in an alley
between overgrown old trellises, where rioting wild vine buried her in
gloom: but I had not been peeping through the bushes a minute, when she
started up and looked wildly about, her quick consciousness, I imagine,
detecting a presence: though I think that I managed to get away unseen.
She keeps her face very dirty: all about her mouth was dry-stained with
a polychrome of grape, _murs_, and other coloured juices, like
slobbering _gamins_ of old. I could also see that her nose and cheeks
are now sprinkled with little freckles.

Four days since I saw her a third time, and then found that the
primitive instinct to represent the world in pictures has been working
in her: for she was drawing. It was down in the middle one of the three
east-and-west village streets, for thither I had strolled toward
evening, and coming out upon the street from between an old wall and a
house, saw her quite near. I pulled up short--and peered. She was lying
on her face all among grasses, a piece of yellow board before her, and
in her fingers a chalk-splinter: and very intently she drew, her
tongue-tip travelling along her short upper-lip from side to side,
regularly as a pendulum, her fez tipped far back, a