For a long time Eepersip watched them. Then something caused her to look up. This something was the strange, shrill cry of a bird above her. She looked up suddenly and saw the bird. But she did not watch it, for the glint of something white—a strange whiteness which she had never seen before—caught her eye. She gazed long upon it, until, when her eyes became accustomed, she was able to make out the outline of a peak, going up sharp as a tooth, with bumps of smoother outline stretching away, away into the blue immensity of space on either side.
“Oh,” said Eepersip, “ a dream! Oh, what a beautiful dream! But—I feel so wide awake.”
She gazed and gazed, silent.
“Oh,” she said again, after a while, “it cannot be a dream, it mustn’t be a dream!”
She gazed and gazed again.
“Oh,” she repeated, “I must go there at once! The snowy mountains!”
She plunged into the beautiful, icy lake and swam across it with never a thought of the beauty in the green depths around her. Her eyes were fixed upon that one thing only. Soon she reached the opposite shore, consisting only of thick woods. Her heart—that heart beautiful, yet with a certain sense of childlikeness in it which had never left her—was mad for a glimpse of those mountains. It was then that she felt as if there were a great bird in her, pulling her, hauling her forward, regardless of the thorns and nettles which tore her delicate dress of ferns and blossoms. At last she got through the forest and found herself in an open meadow, with the wondrous mountain before her and warm rain falling gently. She saw a farmhouse, and as she went along the simple peasant farmer saw her and muttered to his wife: “Look there, Mary.” Mary looked, and then she said: “Ay, God hath taken this child into his care—ignorance demands mercy.”
A moment of intense thought. She gazed and gazed, bewitched. Then she gave, or tried to give, a little laugh. It did not sound. “Oh,” she tried to say, “how queer I feel! I believe I never felt so queer.” And indeed she did feel queer. For she felt the feeling of speaking to her heart. She was talking, it seemed to her, loudly, but when, even in the midst of her talk, she listened, nothing sounded.
After a few seconds, it seemed, she ran on, leaping through the wet. Raindrops gathered on the ferns and the flowers of her dress, outlining them with the pearly water. She looked like a rain-fairy. Hour after hour passed, and she went like the wind itself; yet she did not tire. At last she found herself near the foot of that wondrous mountain, shimmering with snow-fields, cold white against a deepening night sky.
That night a bird of modest wood-colour, with speckled breast, sang of moonlight; and, rippling faintly, softly, came echoes from his silver-tongued mate. They sang, and they answered, and the moon-frost-tipped pines were quiet, and clouds floated near, snowy palaces of silence. Spellbound, Eepersip was borne away to fairy kingdoms where she danced • and where birds sang the only melody in the world.