harmony from secret music startled the wanderer along the paths.

Mark strayed listlessly through the more distant groves. He was
distressed and dissatisfied with himself. His spirit seemed to have lost
its happy elasticity, his mind its active joyousness. The things which
formerly delighted him no longer seemed to please, even the loveliness
of nature was unable to arouse him. He found himself envying those
others who took so much real delight, or seemed to him to do so, in
fantastic and frivolous music and jest and comic sport. He began to
wonder what this new surprising play--these elaborately prepared
harmonies--these swells and runs and shakes--might prove to be. Then he
hated himself for this envy--for this curiosity. He wished to return to
his old innocence--his old simplicity.

But he felt that this could never be. As the Princess had told him,
whatever in after years he might become, never would he taste this
delight of his child's nature again. He was inexpressibly sad and
depressed.

As he wandered on, not knowing where he went, and growing almost stupid,
and indifferent even to pain, he found himself suddenly surrounded by a
throng of dancing and laughing girls. It was easy, in this magic garden,
to steal unobserved upon any one amid the bosky hedges and arcades; but
to surprise one so abstracted as the dreamy and listless boy required no
effort at all. With hands clasped and mocking laughter they surrounded
the unhappy Mark. They were masqued, with delicate bits of fringed silk
across the eyes, but had they not been so he was too confused to have
recognised them. He tried in vain to escape. Then he was lifted from the
ground by a score of hands and borne rapidly away.

The stories of swan-maidens and winged fairies of his old histories
crossed his mind, and he seemed to be flying through the air; suddenly
this strange flight came to an end; he was on his feet again, and, as he
looked confusedly around, he found that he was alone.

He was standing on a circular space of lawn, surrounded by the lofty
wood. In the centre was an antique statue of a faun playing upon a
flute. He seemed to recognise the scene, but could not in his confusion
recall in what part of the vast garden it lay.

As he stood, lost in wonder and expectation, a fairy-like figure was
suddenly present before him, from whence coming he could not tell. The
slim and delicate form was dressed in a gossamer robe, through which the
lovely lim