college.

I dined in solitary state, and the melancholy grandeur of the vast old
dining-room pleased me. Then I went to the room I had selected for my
study, and sat down in a deep chair, under a bright light, to think, or
to let my thoughts meander through labyrinths of their own choosing,
utterly indifferent to the course they might take.

The tall windows of the room opened to the level of the ground upon the
terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and
everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard
the unceasing splash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of
the Woman of the Water. I rose and went out into the still night, and
sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian
flower-pots. The air was deliciously soft and sweet with the smell of
the flowers, and the garden was more congenial to me than the house.
Sad people always like running water and the sound of it at night,
though I cannot tell why. I sat and listened in the gloom, for it was
dark below, and the pale moon had not yet climbed over the hills in
front of me, though all the air above was light with her rising beams.
Slowly the white halo in the eastern sky ascended in an arch above the
wooded crests, making the outlines of the mountains more intensely
black by contrast, as though the head of some great white saint were
rising from behind a screen in a vast cathedral, throwing misty glories
from below. I longed to see the moon herself, and I tried to reckon
the seconds before she must appear. Then she sprang up quickly, and in
a moment more hung round and perfect in the sky. I gazed at her, and
then at the floating spray of the tall fountains, and down at the
pools, where the waterlilies were rocking softly in their sleep on the
velvet surface of the moonlit water. Just then a great swan floated
out silently into the midst of the basin, and wreathed his long neck,
catching the water in his broad bill, and scattering showers of
diamonds around him.

Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I
looked up instantly. Between me and the round disk of the moon rose a
luminous face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a woman's mouth,
full and soft, but not smiling, hooded in black, staring at me as I sat
still upon my bench. She was close to me--so close that I could have
touched her with my hand. But I was transfixed and helpless. She
stood stil