“I have brought you some flowers,” said I, offering her a nosegay which I had picked.  “Will you accept them?”

“I thank you,” she replied with a beaming smile as she came and took them from my hand.  “They are very beautiful, and I shall keep them for your sake.”

“For my sake!”

Inspired by love I continued in a voice trembling with emotion,

“Alumion—­can you not guess what brings me here?”

A blush rose to her cheek as she bent over the flowers.

“It is because I love you,” said I; “because I have loved you ever since I saw you on the day you cut the sacred lily; because I love you—­worship you—­with all my heart and soul.”

She was silent.

“If I am wrong, forgive me,” I went on in a pleading tone.  “Blame the spell your beauty has cast over me, but do not banish me from your presence, which is life and light to me.”

“Wrong!” she murmured, lifting her wondrous eyes to mine.  “Can it be wrong to love, or to speak of love?  Why should I send you away from me because you love me?  Is not love the glory of the heart, as the sun is the glory of the world?  Rejoice, then, in your love as I do in mine.”

“As you do?”

“Yes, as I do.  I should have spoken sooner, but my heart was full of happiness.  For I also love you.  I have loved you from the beginning.”

With a cry of unspeakable joy I sprang from the boat, and would have flung myself at her feet to kiss her hand or the hem of her garment, but she drew back with a look of apprehension.

“Touch me not,” she said gravely, “for by the custom of our land I am holy.  Until to-morrow at sunset I am consecrated to The Giver.”

“Pardon my ignorance,” I responded rather crestfallen.  “Your will shall be my law.  I only wished to manifest my eternal gratitude and devotion to you.”

“Kneel not to me,” she rejoined, “but rather to The Giver, who has so strangely brought us together.  How many ages we might have wandered from world to world without finding each other again!”

“You think we have met before then?” I enquired eagerly, for the same thought had been haunting my own mind.  It seemed to me that I had known Alumion always.

“Assuredly,” she replied, “for you and I are kindred souls who have been separated in another world, by death or evil; and now that we have met again, let us be faithful and loving to each other.”

“Nothing shall separate us any more.”

The words had scarcely passed my lips when the same terrible cry which I had heard once before sounded from the interior of the grotto.

Alumion called or rather sang out a response to the cry, which I did not understand, then said to me in her ordinary voice,

“It is Siloo.  I must go now and give him food.”

I was curious to know who or what was Siloo, but did not dare to ask.  She raised her arms gracefully and smiled a sweet farewell.