In the autumn, in harvest-time, I saw her with a little one. She was lying now, deeply at ease, in the copse wood of the valley-head, within a nest of brake-fern, and her colouring was richer, more in tune with the glory of the hour. She had a burnt glow in her cheeks; her hair showed the hue of the corn which, not a mile away, our people were reaping afield. From where we were, she and I, one could hear the rattle of the machine as it swept down the tall and serried wheat. It was the top of noon when I found her; the sun high in heaven, but so fierce in his power that you saw him through a mist of his own making, and the sky all about him white as a sea-fog. The Oread's body was sanguine brown, only her breast, which I saw half-revealed through a slit in her smock, was snowy white. It was the breast of a maiden, not of a mother with a young child. She leaned over it and watched it asleep. Once or twice she touched its head in affection; then presently looked up and saw me. If I had had no surprise coming upon her, neither now had she. Her eyes took me in, as mine might take in a tree not noticed before, or a flowering bush, or a finger-post. Such things might well be there, and might well not be; I had no particular interest for her, and gave her no alarm. Nothing assures me so certainly of her remoteness from myself, and of my kinship with her too, as this absence of shock. She allowed me to come nearer, and nearer still, to stand close over her and examine the child. She did not lift her head, but I knew that she was aware of me; for her eyelids lifted and fell quickly, and showed me once or twice her watchful eyes. She was indeed a beautiful creature, exquisite in make and finish. Her skin shone like the petals of certain flowers. There is one especially, called _Sisyrinchium_, whose common name of Satin-flower describes a surface almost metallic in its lustre. I thought of that immediately: her skin drank in and exhaled light. I could not hit upon the stuff of which her shift was made. It looked like coarse silk, had a web, had fibres or threads. It may have been flax, but that it was much too sinuous. It seemed to stick to the body where it touched, even to seek the flesh where it did not touch, that it might cling like gossamer with invisible tentacles. In colour it was very pale yellow, not worn nor stained. It was perfectly simple, sleeveless, and stopped half-way between the hip and the knee. I looked for, but could not discover, either hem or seam. Her feet and hands were very lovely, the toes and fingers long and narrow, rosy-brown. I had full sight of her eyes for one throbbing moment. Extraordinarily bright, quick and pulsing, waxing and waning in intensity (as if an inner light beat in them), of the grey colour of a chipped flint stone. The lashes were long, curving and very dark; they were what you might call smut-colour and gave a blurred effect to the eyes which was strange. This, among other things, was what set her