"They are souls," she said.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Anthrops; "are souls no bigger than that?"
"How do you know how large they are?" laughed Haguna, beginning to weave her hair into a curiously intricate braid. "These are but the vital germs of souls; but I hold them bound as surely by imprisoning these."
"But surely every soul is not so weak; all cannot be so cruelly imprisoned."
Again she laughed, that strange laugh.
"Strong and weak are merely relative terms. There is nothing you know of so strong that it may not yield to a stronger, and anything can be captured that is once well laid hold of. I will sing you a song by which you may learn some of the ways in which other things beside souls are caught."
Still continuing her busy weaving, Haguna began to sing. Except the song she had hummed in the woods that afternoon, he had never heard her voice but in speaking, and was astonished at its richness and power; yet it was a simple chant she sang, that seemed to follow the gliding motion of her fingers.
"Running waters swiftly flowing,
On the banks fair lilies growing
Watch the dancing sunbeams quiver,
Watch their faces in the river.
Round their long roots, in and out,
The supple river winds about,—
Wily, oily, deep designing,
Their foundations undermining.
Fall the lilies in the river,
Smoothly glides the stream forever."
The subtle song crept into Anthrops's brain, and seemed to spin a web over it, which, though of lightest gossamer, confined him helplessly in its meshes. Again she sang:—
"From the swamp the mist is creeping;
Fly the startled sunbeams weeping,
Up the mountain feebly flying,
Paling, waning, fainting, dying.
All their cheerful work undoing,
Crawls the cruel mist pursuing.
Shrouded in a purple dimness,
Quenched the sunlight is in shadow;
Over hill and wood and meadow
Broads the mist in sullen grimness."