"Yes; and a very shady proceeding it always seemed to me, if, indeed, it be not a chimera. But, Roscoria, you are not feeling anything in your head, are you? Giddiness, perhaps? A feeling as if you had lost your memory? I hope it's nothing serious; but, my dear fellow, the sun was rather hot when you started." "You great ass! I tell you it is not the head that is affected; it's the _heart_." "Same thing, dear boy." "I have seen, Tregurtha--I have seen an Olympian goddess treading the grass of a nineteenth-century field!" "You've seen a milkmaid!" "Richard, if I thought I could annihilate you, I would try. She was majestic, pensive, golden-haired, distracting; a daughter of the gods, I swear." "My dear sir, I think you had better take it easy," interposed Tregurtha anxiously. "Take the armchair near the window, and open your grief. There really is no hurry." Roscoria was at last induced to sit down, Tregurtha standing by him, with bent brows of perplexity, in his shirt-sleeves, with his hammer still in his hand. Louis began his recital by a torrent of Greek, comparing his mysterious goddess to almost every heroine of antiquity, and using so great a multitude of compound adjectives and fantastic turns of speech that his hearer faintly seized a newspaper and fanned himself therewith. "As it is some time since I was at school, Roscoria," interpolated his friend on the first opportunity, "you will excuse me if I do not quite follow you. If you could speak English mainly, I would pardon the use of a few Grecisms." "I am sorry," said Roscoria, "and, by Jupiter, will try to speak of her in English. Listen. I was taking my solitary ramble through a field skirting a beautiful little wood of Sir John Villiers', filled with wild hyacinths. I had my eyes fixed on my book for a long while, but when I lifted them, what think you, friend, they saw?" "From the way in which you have carried on, I should imagine a woman." Roscoria looked up in admiration at his friend's sagacity. "She came straight by me, walking softly and dreamily, looking aside at the blue hyacinths, and her hat was held in her hand, so that the sun shone on her wonderful hair till it scintillated like a shower of gold. She was tall, yes; but she had an air so ethereal, and in her white dress she showed so like a cloud, that I held my breath lest she should vanish. I thought, indeed, she was some mystic vision I had conjured up from Plato's pages--the Absolute Good she might have been--she was so fair, so spiritual, and the air was so still around us; and there were we alone in the summer silence." "Did she speak?" inquired Tregurtha (for he was a sailor, and his friend's manner was impressive).