The brook rolled beside him fresh as an
infant, toying with the moonlight. He leaned over it, and thrice
waywardly dipped his hand in the clear translucence.
Was it his own face imaged there?
Farina bent close above an eddy of the water. It whirled with a strange
tumult, breaking into lines and lights a face not his own, nor the
moon's; nor was it a reflection. The agitation increased. Now a wreath
of bubbles crowned the pool, and a pure water-lily, but larger, ascended
wavering.
He started aside; and under him a bright head, garlanded with gemmed
roses, appeared. No fairer figure of woman had Farina seen. Her visage
had the lustrous white of moonlight, and all her shape undulated in a
dress of flashing silver-white, wonderful to see. The Lady of the Water
smiled on him, and ran over with ripples and dimples of limpid beauty.
Then, as he retreated on the meadow grass, she swam toward him, and
taking his hand, pressed it to her. After her touch the youth no longer
feared. She curved her finger, and beckoned him on. All that she did
was done flowingly. The youth was a shadow in her silver track as she
passed like a harmless wave over the closed crocuses; but the crocuses
shivered and swelled their throats of streaked purple and argent as at
delicious rare sips of a wine. Breath of violet, and ladysmock, and
valley-lily, mingled and fluttered about her.
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