soned in its meshes, light gleams
From its shadowest recesses.
Tell me, spider, made you ever
Web so strong no knife could sever
Woven of a maiden's tresses?"

On the other side of the viny curtain, Anthrops discovered the entrance
to a large cavern hollowed out in a rock. The cavern was carpeted with
the softest moss of the most variegated shades, ranging from faintest
green to a rich golden brown. The rocky walls were of considerable
height, and curved gracefully around the ample space,--a woodland
apartment. But the most remarkable feature in the grotto was a
rose-colored cloud, that seemed to have been imprisoned in the farther
end, and, in its futile efforts to escape, shifted perpetually into
strange, fantastic figures. Now, the massive form of the Israelitish
giant appeared lying at the feet of the Philistine damsel; anon, the
kingly shoulders of the swift-footed Achilles towered helplessly above
the heads of the island girls. The noble head of Marcus Antoninus bowed
in disgraceful homage before his wife; the gaunt figure of the stern
Florentine trembled at the footsteps of the light Beatrice; the sister
of Honorius, from the throne of half the world, saluted the sister
of Theodosius, grasping the sceptre of the other half in her slender
fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted
subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of
women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was
whimsically represented by the rapid configurations of this strange
vapor.

Anthrops presently discovered Haguna half reclining on a raised
moss-seat, and dreamily running her white fingers through her hair,
which now fell unchecked to her feet. He had lost sight of her but a
few minutes, yet in that short time a strange change had come over her.
Perhaps it was because her rippling hair, which, slightly stirred by the
faint air of the cavern, rose and fell around her in long undulations,
made her appear as if floating in a golden brown haze. Perhaps it was
the familiarity with which she had taken possession of the grotto, as if
it had been a palace that she had expected, prepared for her reception.
But for some reason she appeared a great way off,--no longer a simple
maiden, involved with him in a woodland adventure, but a subtle
enchantress, who, through all the seeming accidents of the day, had
been pursuing a deep-laid plot, and now was awaiting its triumphant
con