ong a shade!

I strove in vain to hide my confusion. This lady only smiled the
deeper out of her baffling eyes.

"If you could guess," she said presently, "how my heart leapt in me,
as if, poor creature, any oars of earth could bring it ease, you would
think me indeed as desolate as I am. To hear the bird scream,
Traveller! I hastened from the gardens as if the black ships of the
Greeks were come to take me. But such is long ago. Tell me, now, is
the world yet harsh with men and sad with women? Burns yet that
madness mirth calls Life? or truly does the puny, busy-tongued race
sleep at last, nodding no more at me?"

I told as best I could how chance had fetched me; told, too, that
earth was yet pestered with men, and heavenly with women. "And the
madness mirth calls Life flickers yet," I said; "and the little race
tosses on in nightmare."

"Ah!" she replied, "so ever run travellers' tales. I too once trusted
to seem indifferent. But you, if shadow deceives me not, may yet
return: I, only to the shades whence earth draws me. Meanwhile," she
said, looking softly at the fountain playing in the clear gloom
beyond, "rest and grow weary again, for there flock more questions to
my tongue than spines on the blackthorn. The gardens are green with
flowers, Traveller; let us talk where rosemary blows."

Following her, I thought of the mysterious beauty of her eyes, her
pallor, her slimness, and that faint smile which hovered between
ecstasy and indifference, and away went my mind to one whom the
shrewdest and tenderest of my own countrymen called once Criseyde.

She led me into a garden all of faint-hued flowers. There bloomed no
scarlet here, nor blue, nor yellow; but white and lavender and purest
purple. Here, also, like torches of the sun, stood poplars each by
each in the windless air, and the impenetrable darkness of cypresses
beneath them.

Here too was a fountain whose waters leapt no more, mossy and
time-worn. I could not but think of those other gardens of my
journey--Jane's, Ennui's, Dianeme's; and yet none like this for the
shingley murmur of the sea, and the calmness of morning.

"But, surely," I said, "this must be very far from Troy."

"Far indeed," she said.

"Far also from the hollow ships."

"Far also from the hollow ships," she replied.

"Yet," said I, "in the country whence I come is a saying: Where the
treasure is--"

"Alack! _there_ gloats the miser!" said Criseyde; "but I, Traveller,
have no