Breathless I looked at them, and my dog forgot to be cold. High on his haunches, with lifted forepaw and sharp-cocked ears, he watched, trembled and whined.

After a while, impatient as it appeared of the ravaging storm, the male drew the female to the ground. They used no language, as we understand it, and made no sign that I could see, but rather sank together to get the shelter of the drift. He lay upon the snow, upon the weather side, she close beside him. They crouched like two birds in a storm, and hid their heads under their interlacing arms. He gave the weather his back, and raised himself on his elbow, the better to shield her. Within his arm she lay and cuddled to him snugly. I can describe his action no more closely than by saying that he covered her as a hen her chick. As a partridge grouts with her wings in a dusty furrow, so he worked in the powdered snow to make her a nest. When the night fell upon them, with its promise of bitter frost in the unrelenting wind, she lay screened against its rigours by the shelter of him. They were very still. Their heads were together, their cheeks touched. I believe that they slept.

III

In the autumn, in harvest-time, I saw her with a little one. She was lying now, deeply at ease, in the copse wood of the valley-head, within a nest of brake-fern, and her colouring was richer, more in tune with the glory of the hour. She had a burnt glow in her cheeks; her hair showed the hue of the corn which, not a mile away, our people were reaping afield. From where we were, she and I, one could hear the rattle of the machine as it swept down the tall and serried wheat. It was the top of noon when I found her; the sun high in heaven, but so fierce in his power that you saw him through a mist of his own making, and the sky all about him white as a sea-fog. The Oread's body was sanguine brown, only her breast, which I saw half-revealed through a slit in her smock, was snowy white. It was the breast of a maiden, not of a mother with a young child.

She leaned over it and watched it asleep. Once or twice she touched its head in affection; then presently looked up and saw me. If I had had no surprise coming upon her, neither now had she. Her eyes took me in, as mine might take in a tree not noticed before, or a flowering bush, or a finger-post. Such things might well be there, and might well not be; I had no particular interest for her, and gave her no alarm. Nothing assures me so certainly of her remoteness from myself, and of my kinship with her too, as this absence of shock.

She allowed me to come nearer, and nearer still, to stand close over her and examine the child. She did not lift her head, but I knew that she was aware of me; for her eyelids lifted and fell quickly, and showed me once or twice her watchful eyes. She was indeed a beautiful creature, exquisite in make and finish. Her skin shone like the petals of certain flowers. There is one especially, called Sisyrinchium, whose common name of Satin-flower describes a surface almost metallic in its lustre. I thought of that immediately: her skin drank in and exhaled light. I could not hit upon the stuff of which her shift was made. It looked like coarse silk, had a web, had fibres or threads. It may have been flax, but that it was much too sinuous. It seemed to stick to the body where it touched, even to seek the flesh where it did not touch, that it might cling like gossamer with invisible tentacles. In colour it was very pale yellow, not worn nor stained. It was perfectly simple, sleeveless, and stopped half-way between the hip and the knee. I looked for, but could not discover, either hem or seam. Her feet and hands were very lovely, the toes and fingers long and narrow, rosy-brown. I had full sight of her eyes for one throbbing moment. Extraordinarily bright, quick and pulsing, waxing and waning in intensity (as if an inner light beat in them), of the grey colour of a chipped flint stone. The lashes were long, curving and very dark; they were what you might call smut-colour and gave a blurred effect to the eyes which was strange. This, among other things, was what set her apart from us, this and the patient yet palpitating stare of her regard. She looked at me suddenly, widely and full, taking in much more than me, yet making me the centre of her vision. It gave me the idea that she was surprised at my nearness and ready for any attack, but did not seek to avoid it. There I was overstanding her and her offspring; and what was must be.

Of the little one I could not see much. It was on its side in the fern, fast asleep. Its arms were stretched up the slope, its face was between them. Its knees were bent and a little foot tucked up to touch its body. Quite naked, brown all over, it was as plump and smooth and tender as a little pig. But it was not pink; it was very brown.

All nature seemed at the top of perfection that wonderful day. A hawk soared high in the blue, bees murmured all about, the distance quivered. I could see under the leaves of a great mullein the bright eyes, then the round body of a mouse. Afar off the corn-cutter rattled and whirred, and above us on the ridgeway some workmen sat at their dinner under the telegraph wires. Men were all about us at their affairs with Nature's face; and here stood I, a man of themselves, and at my feet the Oread lay at ease and watched her young. There was food for wonder in all this, but none for doubt. Who knows what his neighbour sees? Who knows what his dog? Every species of us walks secret from the others; every species of us the centre of his universe, its staple of measure, and its final cause. And if at times one is granted a peep into new heavens and a new earth, and can get no more, perhaps the best thing we win from that is the conviction that we must doubt nothing and wonder at everything. Here, now, was I, common, blundering, trampling, make-shift man, peering upon my Oread—fairy of the hill, whatever she was—and tempted to gauge her by my man-taught balances of right and wrong, and use and wont. Was that young male who had sheltered her in the snow her mate in truth, the father of her young one? Or what sort of mating had been hers? What wild love? What mysteries of the night? And where was he now? And was he one, or were they many, who companioned this beautiful thing? And would he come if I waited for him? And would he share her watch, her quiet content, her still rapture?

Idle, man-made questions, custom-taught! I did wait. I sat by her waiting. But he did not come.

IV