It was late autumn. The approaching death of the year struck her majesty painfully. The ocean was a dull green under the heavy sky. She turned, and looked at the silver spires of the palace which lay in the distance. "Ah! what a difference it would have made in our dear home," she said, "had we been blessed with a child." She clasped her hands in a frenzy of desire. It seemed to her agitated mind that the sea too was perturbed, that its rippling waves kissed her sandalled feet lovingly. At length, tired with her walk, she lay down and wept herself to sleep. [Illustration] When she awoke it was evening. The woodlands and mountains lay in deep shadow. The Queen started up, scarcely remembering where she was. When she quite realised her position she drew her hooded cloak more tightly around her, and prepared to return home. She had scarcely made any progress, when suddenly, a few feet from her, she observed in the sea a face of surpassing beauty. The hair lay floating on the waves like red weed; the eyes were as green as emeralds, with a fierce tenderness in them. The Queen stood transfixed with amazement, gazing at the woman's face. She was uncertain what to do, whether to remain where she was, or whether to fly homewards along the shore. The royal lady had been reared in the simplest manner; she had been taught to distrust her imagination, so she rubbed her eyes, expecting that when she looked again the vision would have vanished. But she was mistaken; moreover, the apparition began to address her in throbbing bursts of song. "Mortal, I am here to grant thy desire. I have heard thy plaints and caught thy tears, and I have sorrowed for thee and tried to soothe thy woe, for I too have known bitterness and despair. I was once the love of the North Wind. He wooed me amidst the ice-plains, in a world of crystal glaciers. He chased me through space, until we lay panting on the shores of Africa. But he has left me for the South Wind, with her golden hair and her hot breath. They have made their home on a mountain-top, where the snow-flowers bloom in profusion, where the sea can never go. Four years since he came, bearing a child in his arms. He laid it on my breast, saying that I was to keep it and rear it for his sake. That child I will give to thee. She knows nothing of her parentage, and it would be best that thou shouldst never tell her to whom she owes her being." "But when the North Wind finds that thou hast parted with thy precious charge what will he do?" panted the Queen. "He will storm and tear and lash my waves into mountains, and moan round continent and island, and search my ocean from the North to the South Pole. His spouse will scorch me with her breath till I am forced to dive down to cool crystal caverns, where, upon a bed of seaweed, I shall laugh loud and long, a conqueror."