of sheltered nooks where waters whispered of secresy to satisfy Diana herself.  They have that whisper and waving of secresy in secret scenery; they beckon to the bath; and they conjure classic visions of the pudency of the Goddess irate or unsighted.  The semi-mythological state of mind, built of old images and favouring haunts, was known to Dacier.  The name of Diana, playing vaguely on his consciousness, helped to it.  He had no definite thought of the mortal woman when the highest grass-roll near the rock gave him view of a bowered source and of a pool under a chain of cascades, bounded by polished shelves and slabs.  The very spot for him, he decided at the first peep; and at the second, with fingers instinctively loosening his waist-coat buttons for a commencement, he shouldered round and strolled away, though not at a rapid pace, nor far before he halted.

That it could be no other than she, the figure he had seen standing beside the pool, he was sure.  Why had he turned?  Thoughts thick and swift as a blush in the cheeks of seventeen overcame him; and queen of all, the thought bringing the picture of this mountain-solitude to vindicate a woman shamefully assailed.—­She who found her pleasure in these haunts of nymph and Goddess, at the fresh cold bosom of nature, must be clear as day.  She trusted herself to the loneliness here, and to the honour of men, from a like irreflective sincereness.  She was unable to imagine danger where her own impelling thirst was pure. . .

The thoughts, it will be discerned, were but flashes of a momentary vivid sensibility.  Where a woman’s charm has won half the battle, her character is an advancing standard and sings victory, let her do no more than take a quiet morning walk before breakfast.

But why had he turned his back on her?  There was nothing in his presence to alarm, nothing in her appearance to forbid.  The motive and the movement were equally quaint; incomprehensible to him; for after putting himself out of sight, he understood the absurdity of the supposition that she would seek the secluded sylvan bath for the same purpose as he.  Yet now he was, debarred from going to meet her.  She might have an impulse to bathe her feet.  Her name was Diana . . . .

Yes, and a married woman; and a proclaimed one!

And notwithstanding those brassy facts, he was ready to side with the evidence declaring her free from stain; and further, to swear that her blood was Diana’s!

Nor had Dacier ever been particularly poetical about women.  The present Diana had wakened his curiosity, had stirred his interest in her, pricked his admiration, but gradually, until a sleepless night with its flock of raven-fancies under that dominant Bell, ended by colouring her, the moment she stood in his eyes, as freshly as the morning heavens.  We are much influenced in youth by sleepless nights:  they disarm, they predispose us to submit to soft occasion; and in our youth occasion is always coming.