The sunshine streaming through the leaves stole through the interstices in the roughly joined blocks, played about the sinister slab, and lent an idyllic charm to this barbarous altar. Even Mlle. Marguerite seemed pensive and brooding. For my part I entered the cavern, and, after examining the dolmen thoroughly, set to work to sketch it. For ten minutes I had been absorbed in this work, forgetting everything that was going on about me, when Mlle. Marguerite suddenly spoke:
"Do you want a Velleda to enliven your picture?"
I looked up. She had wound a wreath of oak-leaves round her forehead and stood at the head of the dolmen, leaning lightly against a sheaf of saplings. In the half-light, under the branches, her white dress looked like marble, and her eyes shone with strange fire in the shadow of the oaken crown. She was beautiful, and I think she knew it. I looked at her and found it hard to speak.
"If I am in the way, I'll move," she said.
"Oh, no! please don't."
"Well, make haste; put Mervyn in too. He'll be the Druid and I the Druidess."
I was so lucky—thanks to the vagueness of a sketch—as to reproduce this poetic vision pretty faithfully. Evidently interested, she came and looked at the drawing.
"It isn't bad," she said, laughing, as she threw her crown away. "You must admit that I am very good to you."
I did. I might even have added, if she had asked me, that she was not without a spice of coquetry. But without that she would not have been a woman. Perfection is detestable, and even goddesses need something besides their deathless beauty to win love.
We went back through the tangled underwood to the path in the wood, and thence returned to the river.