“For what?” said I.

“I think, for Robin Herrick,” she said.

It was a lamentable confession, for that said, gravity fled away; and Electra fetched out a lute from a low cupboard in the arbour, and while she played Julia sang to a sober little melody I seemed to know of old: 

        Sighs have no skill
        To wake from sleep
    Love once too wild, too deep.

        Gaze if thou will,
        Thou canst not harm
    Eyes shut to subtle charm.

        Oh! ’tis my silence
        Shows thee false,
    Should I be silent else?

        Haste thou then by! 
        Shine not thy face
    On mine, and love’s disgrace!

Whereat Dianeme lifted on me so naive an afflicted face I must needs beseech another song, despite my drowsy lids.  Wherefore I heard, far away as it were, the plucking of the strings, and a voice betwixt dream and wake sing: 

        All sweet flowers
          Wither ever,
        Gathered fresh
          Or gathered never;
    But to live when love is gone!—­
    Grieve, grieve, lute, sadly on!

        All I had—­
          ’Twas all thou gav’st me;
        That foregone,
          Ah! what can save me? 
    If the exorcised spirit fly,
    Nought is left to love me by.

        Take thy stars,
          My tears then leave me;
        Thine my bliss,
          As thine to grieve me;
    Take....

For then, so insidious was the music, and not quite of this earth the voice, my senses altogether forsook me, and I fell asleep.

Would that I could remember much else!  But I confess it is the heart remembers, not the poor, pestered brain that has so many thoughts and but one troubled thinker.  Indeed, were I now to be asked—­Were the fingers cold of these bright ladies?  Were their eyes blue, or hazel, or brown? or, haply, were Dianeme’s that incomparable, dark, sparkling grey?  Wore Julia azure, and Electra white?  And was that our poet wrote our poet’s only, or truly theirs, and so even more lovely?—­I fear I could not tell.

I fell asleep; and when I awoke no lute was sounding.  I was alone; and the arbour a little house of gloom on the borders of evening.  I caught up yet one more handful of cherries, and stumbled out, heavy and dim, into a pale-green firmanent of buds and glow-worms, to seek the poor Rosinante I had so heedlessly deserted.

But I was gone but a little way when I was brought suddenly to a standstill by another sound that in the hush of the garden, in the bright languor after sleep, went to my heart:  it was as if a child were crying.

I pushed through a thick and aromatic clump of myrtles, and peering between the narrow leaves, perceived the cold, bright face of a little marble god beneath willows; and, seated upon a starry bank near by, one whom by the serpentry of her hair and the shadow of her lips I knew to be Anthea.