I remember awakening with a start, conscious of a face bending over me that was beautiful and strange.
I was quite unable to account for myself, and my surprise was heightened by the singular dress of the woman I saw. It was Greek—not of modern but of ancient Greece.
What had happened? Had I been acting in a Greek play and been stunned by an accident to the scenery? No; the grass upon which I was lying was damp, and a sharp twinge between the shoulders told me I had been there already too long. What, then, was the meaning of this classic dress?
I raised myself on one arm; and the young woman who had been kneeling beside me arose also. I was dazed, and shaded my eyes from the sun on the horizon—whether setting or rising I could not tell. I fixed my eyes upon the feet of my companion; they were curiously shod in soft leather, for cleanliness rather than for protection; tightly laced from the toe to the ankle and half way up the leg—half-moccasin and half-cothurnus. I fixed my eyes upon them and slowly became quite sure that I was alive and awake, but seemed still dazed and unwilling to look up. Presently she spoke.
"Are you ill?" she asked.
"I don't think so," answered I, as I lifted my eyes to hers.
When our eyes met I jumped to my feet with an alertness so fresh and fruitful that I seemed to myself to have risen anew from the Fountain of Youth. A miracle had happened. I was dead and had come to life again—and apparently this time in the Olympian world.
"Héré!" I exclaimed; "or Athéné! Cytherea, or Artemis!"
Then quickly the look of sympathetic concern that I had just seen in her eyes vanished. A ripple of laughter passed over her face like the first touch of a breeze on a becalmed sea; for a moment she seemed to restrain it, but her merriment awakened mine, and on perceiving it she abandoned all restraint and burst into a laugh that was musical, bewitching, and contagious. We stood there a full minute, both of us laughing, though I did not understand why. She soon explained.
"Where on earth do you come from, Xenos, and where—where did you get those things?" She pointed to my pantaloons as she spoke.