But before she lay down on her little bed she carefully unfastened a beautiful red rose which was pinned to her bodice and placed it in a glass of water, kissing it as she did so, for it was the first gift of her betrothed.
Poor Chryssa reached the shore; but though the moonlight still shone pale and pure and clear, it gave her no help. For the radiance was now spread all over the land; and before her there stretched a steep and rocky coast, beyond which—far off it looked to the mermaid—she could dimly see trees and bushes and some darker, harder form among them.
“It may be a house, such as the earth-folk live in,” she thought. “And there perhaps these flowers they call roses are growing. But how am I to get there? and how should I find the flower if I were there?”
Still she must try. Slowly and painfully she drew herself some little way up the shore, catching hold of the stones with her hands; then she stopped to rest, and set off again. It was really not very distant, but to poor Chryssa it seemed terrible: she could only go a few yards at a time without resting. The night was far gone, the dawn at hand, when the little mermaid, gasping and exhausted, her tender hands bruised and bleeding, sank for the last time, unable to drag herself any farther, on a grass plot just below the window whence the young girl had seen her in the moonlight like a vision, floating towards the shore.
Hebe, for so the maiden was called, woke early, and after glancing at her rose, threw open the window and leant out to watch the sunrise.
“How lovely it is,” she thought, “and how happy I am!” for her betrothal had only taken place the day before.
“Dear rose, I will keep you always—even when withered—always, till—”
But a low sob or wail, just below the window, startled her. What could it be? Leaning farther out, she saw at first nothing but a long tangle of shining hair covering some unseen object, for Chryssa’s hair was like a golden cloak.
“What is it? Who is lying there?”
A faint voice answered—