"She went on: 'I was looking in the water between my hands, creating my lover by the spell of desire, and I could see his face in the vortex my fingers made as I moved them to and fro. I gazed and gazed and gazed, and then, suddenly, some fear gripped me, for the face became a face of a man, with the idle water swilling across it. But it was a face: my mind battled against the realization till the fact governed it. It was a face, brown and keen and smiling with a gleam of white teeth, and then a hand met my hand in the water and drew me forward. I did not drag back. I think I fell on my face, but here I have no memory.'
"When again she came to a sense of things, she was lying in a dim place where all that moved seemed shadows only. At first it was her thought that she was yet on the bank by the pool, but as her mind renewed its hold she knew this was not so. She breathed an air alien to her living nostrils, and knew that here she had no part in a world of human creatures, and the thought rose in her that she was dead, drowned in the pool, and had reached the next world. 'Can this be hell?' she wondered, as she rose to a sitting posture and strove to see about her.
"It was a grassed mound she sat on, in a kind of plain, and she heard the creaking of bushes about her where no wind breathed on her cheek. The dimness was not the part darkness of a summer night, but a shadow where no sun had ever shone, a barren gloom that was lugubrious and uneasy. A dozen feet from her all was blurred and not to be distinguished, but it seemed to her that many people moved round about her, and now and again there was a rustle of hushed voices, as of folk who met stealthily and spoke with checked breath. In the dimness shapes moved, faintly suggested to her eyes, and presently, though she had no thrill of fear, a loneliness oppressed her that nearly made her weep. She was not as one that has no comrade in the world, for such a one is at least kin by blood and flesh to all others. She was alone, as a living man in a tomb is alone.
"With a little fervor of troubled recollection, like a child reciting a psalm, she told us how she rose to her feet and gazed about her, pondering which way to take. And while she was yet doubtful a hand touched her elbow, and she started to face a man that had come from behind her. Staring at his face with wits clenched like a fist, the contours of the face in the water returned to her mind, the sharp brown face that had grown up in the middle of the countenance she dreamed upon, and she knew in a moment that here was the face again and the rest of the man with it.
"'I knew it at once when his teeth shone through his smile,' she said. 'He was not so tall as I, and very brown in that sorrowful light, but not black. There was a robe he wore from his neck to his ankles that left one arm bare and the little feet below its hem, and his head was bare with straight black hair upon it. His hand was on my arm, and he stood before me and looked in my face and smiled a little at me, very gently and timidly.'
"It seems he found her scarcely less strange than she found him. In his bearing was something of awe and wonder, while she stared with a mere surprise.
"'Are you a man?' she asked at length, stupidly.
"He smiled yet. 'No,' he answered gently. 'But oh, you are beautiful!'
"She replied nothing at first, and he went on with a soft voice like the voice of a tender child. 'I saw you in the water long ago, I looking up to you, you looking down to where I was hidden. I smiled to you and reached my hand, but there was no smile on your face, and I did not dare take you till—till this time. Then your hands were stretched forward, and as I clasped them you sank to me,—my beloved! my beloved!'
"His brown face glowed upon his words with a fire of worship. She started back from him with a quick terror, hands clasped and lips parted.