A girl sat on a flat rock beside a small stream of water, evidently drying her hair in the rays of the sun, for it hung loose over her shoulders and shone red and gold and brown, seeming to ripple down from the crown of her head to the ground. She was entirely alone and a close group of trees formed a kind of green temple behind her. It had been an extremely warm day so that even the birds were resting from song and from labor.
Suddenly the girl tore into small pieces the letter that she had been writing, tossing them into the air like a troop of white butterflies.
"There is no use of my trying to do anything sensible this afternoon," Betty Ashton sighed, "I am so happy over being in the country once more with nothing to do but to do nothing. I was dead tired of all those people at the pension, of Fritz and Franz and all the rest of them. It is lovely to be alone here in the German forests——"
Then unexpectedly Betty Ashton straightened up, looking about her in every possible direction in a puzzled fashion while hurriedly arranging her hair. For although she could see no one approaching, she could hear an unmistakable sound, a kind of mellow whistling, then flute-like notes and afterwards a low throbbing, as though the wings of imprisoned things were beating in the air.
Betty stared through the open spaces between the trees, since from that direction the sound was now approaching. But when and where had she heard that peculiar music before? However, the Germans were such a strangely musical race that probably any one of her neighbors could play.
Then with a smothered expression of vexation, the girl got up on her feet and took a few steps forward. There was no mistaking the figure slowly advancing, the long light hair, the mild eyes and timid though persistent manner. But how in the world had Frederick von Reuter found her, when she had been careful not to mention where they were going in saying farewell at the pension?
"Why, Herr von Reuter," Betty exclaimed, divided between vexation and the thought that she must not be rude, "what are you doing in this part of the world and how did you happen to discover me?"
At this question the young man abruptly ceased his sentimental playing, though instead of answering Betty in a sensible fashion, he pointed first toward her hair and then toward the water behind her and the circle of hills.
"I haf come in search of 'Das Rheingold,'" he murmured in his funny, broken English, "and I haf found a Rhein mädchen, nicht wahr?"
Betty bit her lips. She was not in the mood for nonsense and it was difficult to conceive of her present companion as the hero of Wagner's great opera.