The dryad tried painfully and vainly to understand his meaning. What had their loves to do with the little hermitage at the foot of the hill and the lonely man who lived there? To wed meant to her to give herself hand and heart and all to the lover whom she loved, and if ever she dreamed on summer days and nights of what love could be it was as of something that might come to pass when the gods returned, as they surely would one day return from the twilight land. Now she knew that she loved this mortal wholly, now she knew that this mortal loved her wholly, and now, looking at her mortal lover, she knew that he was in peril of the melancholy disease, the ceasing, which mortals call death. For since she had unclasped her hands from his hands his face had grown pale again which had warmed at her touch, and his energies had ebbed with the warmth of his wooing, and his senses sickened with the dizziness in his head. She clasped him again, but her touch could no longer quicken his vitality as keenly as before, for her powers were weaker through love of a mortal. He slipped from her arms upon the grass and his face was grown suddenly gray. "What has happened," he moaned, "that a scratch can so unman me?" Argathona bent over him, consoling, comforting, loving. "I must find the herb of healing," she said. "It hides in the heart of the wood. Sleep here for a little till I return." She breathed softly upon his forehead willing him to sleep, and the youth's drawn face softened, his limbs relaxed, and he lay motionless upon the turf. A stranger would have guessed that he was dead, but Argathona knew better; she knew that the youth lay drowned in a dreamless, soothing slumber. "Sleep," she murmured--"sleep till I return with the herb of healing." Tears flooded her eyes making the moonlight dim, and she beat at her breasts. "Alas! I cannot deny to love him. My mother's fate is mine, for I love a mortal, and my lover will die in a day and I shall live unhappy till the gods ride back from the twilight land." She turned from her sleeping lover and ran swifter than a stag across the moonlit space and dived into the darkness of the wood. VIII SIMON SPIES