"I was pursuing you round rocks and over streams and through undergrowth all night long. You were you and yet you weren't. Somehow I got the impression that it was you as you would have been hundreds and thousands of years ago. And I kept on losing you and then little satyrs beckoned at me to show me the way you'd gone, and I stumbled on after the hoofs that were always flashing up just ahead--just vanishing round corners." "Satyrs? What are they?" asked Désirée. Archie explained as picturesquely as possible, but was brought to a stop by a curious change in Désirée's eyes. They wore the strained, misty look of the person who is trying hard to catch at some long-lost memory. Again he was startled by that strange feeling that something else was looking from between those placid lids of hers. "But I know," she began--"those creatures you are telling me--_what_ is it I know about them?" She broke off and shook herself impatiently. "Bah! It is gone. And then what happened--did you find me at the end?" "I can't quite remember," said Archie slowly "Something happened, but what it was is all blurred. I believe you're a wood-nymph, Désirée--a wood-nymph whose father was a satyr--and he chased and caught your mother and took her down through his tangle of undergrowth with his hands in her hair, never heeding her screams. You have very definite little points at the top of your ears, you know! We all have them a bit to remind us of our wild-dog days, but yours are the most so I've ever seen. Do you never take off all your clothes and go creeping and slipping through the woods at night, to bathe in one of the crater-pools by the light of the moon?" "How did you know?" She turned wide, startled eyes on him, her quickened breath fluttered her gown distressfully. "What!--you do it, then?" exclaimed Archie. "No! no! What folly are you talking!" She sprang to her feet and slipped behind the oak-sapling, as though it were a defence against some danger; across the boughs he saw her puzzled, fearful eyes. As he watched her the expression of alarm faded--she put up her hand to her hair, gave it a quieting pat and tucked some stray strands into place, then she looked across at the easel.