[II.]
The banks of the stream fell suddenly away on either side and the canoe glided slowly and softly into a miniature lake. It was perhaps twenty yards across at its widest place and much more than that in length. Occasionally a far-reaching branch threw trembling shadows on the water, but for the most part the trees stood back from the margin of the pool and allowed the fresh green turf to descend unhampered to the water’s edge. At a point farthest from where Ethan had entered a little cascade tumbled. On all sides the ground sloped slightly upward, and in one place a group of larches crowned the summit of a knoll and mingled their delicate branches far above the neighboring maples. Almost concealed among them an uncertain gleam of white caught at moments through the trees to the right suggested a building of some sort—perhaps the marble temple of the divinity, who, seated on the bank with her bare sandaled feet crossed before her, observed the intruder with calm, dreamy, almost smiling unconcern.
It was a beautiful scene into which Ethan had floated. Overhead was a blue sky against which a few soft white clouds hung seemingly motionless as though, like Narcissus, they had become enamored of their reflections in the pool there below. On a tiny islet in the pool, dwarf willows caressed the water with the tips of their pendulous branches. Further on a trio of white swans sunned themselves, and about the margin the bosom of the pool was carpeted with lily-pads and starred with a multitude of fragrant blooms, white, rose-hued, carmine, pale violet, sulphur-colored and blue. The gauze wings of darting dragon-flies caught the sunlight, insects hovered above the flower-cups and in the branches around many a feathered cantatrice was singing her heart out. And for background there was always the varied green of encircling trees.
Yes, it was very beautiful, but Ethan had no eyes for it. With paddle still suspended between gunwale and water he was staring in a fashion at once depicting surprise, curiosity, and admiration at the figure on the grass. And what wonder? [Who would have thought to find a Grecian goddess under New England skies?] Ethan’s thoughts leaped back to mythology and he sought a name for her. Diana? Minerva? Venus? Iris? Penelope?
And all the while—a very little while despite the telling—his eyes ranged from the sandaled feet to the warm brown hair with its golden fillet. A single garment of gleaming white reached from the feet to the shoulders where it was caught together on either side with a metal clasp. The arms were bare, youthfully slender, aglow in the sunlight. And yet it was to the eyes that his gaze returned each time. “Minerva!” his thoughts triumphed, “‘Minerva, goddess azure-eyed!’” And yet in the next instant he knew that while her eyes were undeniably blue she was no wise Minerva. Such youthful softness belonged rather to Iris or Daphne or Syrinx.
[WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT TO FIND A GRECIAN GODDESS UNDER NEW ENGLAND SKIES?]