The sunshine streaming through the leaves stole through the interstices in the roughly joined blocks, played about the sinister slab, and lent an idyllic charm to this barbarous altar. Even Mlle. Marguerite seemed pensive and brooding. For my part I entered the cavern, and, after examining the _dolmen_ thoroughly, set to work to sketch it. For ten minutes I had been absorbed in this work, forgetting everything that was going on about me, when Mlle. Marguerite suddenly spoke: "Do you want a Velleda to enliven your picture?" I looked up. She had wound a wreath of oak-leaves round her forehead and stood at the head of the _dolmen_, leaning lightly against a sheaf of saplings. In the half-light, under the branches, her white dress looked like marble, and her eyes shone with strange fire in the shadow of the oaken crown. She was beautiful, and I think she knew it. I looked at her and found it hard to speak. "If I am in the way, I’ll move," she said. "Oh, no! please don’t." "Well, make haste; put Mervyn in too. He’ll be the Druid and I the Druidess." I was so lucky—thanks to the vagueness of a sketch—as to reproduce this poetic vision pretty faithfully. Evidently interested, she came and looked at the drawing. "It isn’t bad," she said, laughing, as she threw her crown away. "You must admit that I am very good to you." I did. I might even have added, if she had asked me, that she was not without a spice of coquetry. But without that she would not have been a woman. Perfection is detestable, and even goddesses need something besides their deathless beauty to win love. We went back through the tangled underwood to the path in the wood, and thence returned to the river. "Before we return," said the young girl, "I want to show you the waterfall, more especially as I am looking forward to a little diversion on my own account. Come, Mervyn, come along, dear dog. Oh, you are lovely!" We soon reached the bank facing the rocks which blocked the bed of the river. The water fell from a height of many feet into a large and deeply sunk circular basin, which seemed to be shut in on all sides by an amphitheatre of vegetation, broken by dripping rocks. But there were unseen outlets for the overflow of the little lake, and the streams so formed reunited a little lower down. "It is not exactly a Niagara," said Mlle. Marguerite, raising her voice against the noise of the falling waters, "but I have heard connoisseurs and artists say that it is rather pretty, nevertheless. Have you admired it? Good! Now I hope you’ll bestow any enthusiasm you may have left on Mervyn. Here, Mervyn!"