“But, Pan, how can any one think thoughts without something to think them with?  I never thought of anything that I have not seen, or touched, or smelt, or tasted, or heard about from some one else.  If I think with nothing, and about nothing, is that thinking, do you think?”

“I think,” answered Pan evasively, “that you are a sensationalist, a materialist, a sceptic, a revolutionist; and if you had not sought the assistance of a god, I should have said not much better than an atheist.  I also think it is time I thought about some physic for you instead of metaphysics, which are bad for my head, and for your soul.”  Saying this, Pan, with rough tenderness, deposited the almost fainting maiden upon a couch of fern, and, having supported her head with a bundle of herbs, leaned his own upon his hand, and reflected with all his might.  The declining sun was now nearly opposite the cavern’s mouth, and his rays, straggling through the creepers that wove their intricacies over the entrance, chequered with lustrous patches the forms of the dying girl and the meditating god.  Ever and anon, a petal would drop from the flower; this was always succeeded by a shuddering tremor throughout Iridion’s frame and a more forlorn expression on her pallid countenance:  while Pan’s jovial features assumed an expression of deeper concern as he pressed his knotty hand more resolutely against his shaggy forehead, and wrung his dexter horn with a more determined grasp, as though he had caught a burrowing idea by the tail.

“Aha!” he suddenly exclaimed, “I have it!”

“What have you, Pan?” faintly lisped the expiring Iridion.

Instead of replying, Pan grasped a wand that leaned against the wall of his grot, and with it touched the maiden and the flower.  O strange metamorphosis!  Where the latter had been pining in its vase, a lovely girl, the image of Iridion, lay along the ground with dishevelled hair, clammy brow, and features slightly distorted by the last struggles of death.  On the ferny couch stood an earthen vase, from which rose a magnificent lily, stately, with unfractured stem, and with no stain or wrinkle on its numerous petals.

“Aha!” repeated Pan; “I think we are ready for him now.”  Then, having lifted the inanimate body to the couch, and placed the vase, with its contents, on the floor of his cavern, he stepped to the entrance, and shading his eyes with his hand, seemed to gaze abroad in quest of some anticipated visitor.

The boughs at the foot of the steep path to the cave divided, and a figure appeared at the foot of the rock.  The stranger’s mien was majestic, but the fitness of his proportions diminished his really colossal stature to something more nearly the measure of mortality.  His form was enveloped in a sweeping sad-coloured robe; a light, thin veil resting on his countenance, mitigated, without concealing, the not ungentle austerity of his marble features.  His gait was remarkable; nothing could be more remote from every indication of haste, yet such was the actual celerity of his progression, that Pan had scarcely beheld him ere he started to find him already at his side.