"You imp! was there ever such a woman!" Catching her wrists, he parts his knees and drops her on to the rug; then perhaps the subtile magnetism that is in her affects him, for he stoops and snatches her up and carries her up and down, and then over to the window, and lets the fading light with its glimmer of moonshine play on her odd face with its tantalizing changes, and his eyes dilate and his color deepens as he crushes her soft little body to him and carries her off to her room. * * * * * Summer is waning, and the harvest is ripe for ingathering, and the voice of the reaping machine is loud in the land. She is stretched on her back on the short, heather-mixed moss at the side of a bog stream. Rod and creel are flung aside, and the wanton breeze with the breath of coolness it has gathered in its passage over the murky dykes of black bog-water is playing with the tail-fly, tossing it to and fro with a half threat to fasten it to a prickly spine of golden gorse. Bunches of bog-wool nod their fluffy heads, and through the myriad indefinite sounds comes the regular scrape of a strickle on the scythe of a reaper in a neighboring meadow. Overhead a flotilla of clouds is steering from the south in a northeasterly direction. Her eyes follow them,--old-time galleons, she thinks, with their wealth of snowy sail spread, riding breast to breast up a wide, blue fjord after victory. The sails of the last are rose-flushed, with a silver edge. Someway she thinks of Cleopatra sailing down to meet Antony, and a great longing fills her soul to sail off somewhere too,--away from the daily need of dinner-getting and the recurring Monday with its washing, life with its tame duties and virtuous monotony. She fancies herself in Arabia on the back of a swift steed; flashing eyes set in dark faces surround her, and she can see the clouds of sand swirl, and feel the swing under her of his rushing stride; and her thoughts shape themselves into a wild song,--a song to her steed of flowing mane and satin skin, an uncouth rhythmical jingle with a feverish beat; a song to the untamed spirit that dwells in her. Then she fancies she is on the stage of an ancient theatre, out in the open air, with hundreds of faces upturned toward her. She is gauze-clad in a cobweb garment of wondrous tissue; her arms are clasped by jewelled snakes, and one with quivering diamond fangs coils round her hips; her hair floats loosely, and her feet are sandal-clad, and the delicate breath of vines and the salt freshness of an incoming sea seem to fill her nostrils. She bounds forward and dances, bends her lissome waist, and curves her slender arms, and gives to the soul of each man what he craves, be it good or evil. And she can feel now, lying here in the shade of Irish hills, with her head resting on her scarlet shawl and her eyes closed, the grand, intoxicating power of swaying all these human souls to wonder and applause.