offering.
It was untouched. Then she entered the still benighted wood, and passed
the cold gray waters. Arrived at the temple, she felt a hateful
stillness in the place.

"Hylas!" she loudly called, "come to me! For _you_ there is no danger;
but for me, they will take me away at sunrise. The Christians will come
to-day and carry me hence. Oh, Hylas! where do you hide yourself?"

But only a strong and angry wind disturbed the laurels around the
temple, and all was still. Then the song of the birds began all around
her, and a silver gleam shot across the eastern horizon. Suddenly
rosy-tinged signals stood among the sad-colored torn clouds above her
head. The hour for her departure was approaching. She gazed intently
down among the pines, where Hylas had disappeared, and painfully and
slowly began to descend. The wild-eyed hares glanced at her and shrank
into concealment again. The birds uttered cries of alarm, and the
motionless lizards lay close to her feet. Her heart beat anxiously when
she heard the sudden stroke of a bird's wing, scared from its nest, and
she paused often to listen, but no human voice was heard.

She penetrated slowly thus to that shore of the island which she had
never yet visited. She reached a border of white sand, and studied its
surface. She found a record there,--traces of footsteps, and the long
trail of a boat, drawn from a thicket of laurels to the shore, and down
to the water's edge. She stood many minutes contemplating these signs.
She imaged to herself the retreat by night, by the late rising light of
the waning moon. She seemed to see the youth, his manly arm urging the
boat from its hiding-place. In this spot his foot pressed the sand.
There he walked before and drew the little craft behind him. He launched
it here, and, had not the winds urged the water up the shore, his last
footstep might have remained for Evadne to gaze at.

He is surely gone! To return for the smiles of Evadne? She knows not if
he will return; but she glances upward at the sky, and feels that she
soon will have quitted the island, this happy island, forever!

Upward through the wood again she toils to take a last look at the
temple. The spot seemed already to have forgotten her. And yet here lies
a withered crown she wove once for Hylas; and here she finds at last the
dart she lost for him, when she drew his bow in play. Now she sees on
the shore at Athos an assembly of the people, and the men push off their
bo