But I was gone but a little way when I was brought suddenly to a
standstill by another sound that in the hush of the garden, in the
bright languor after sleep, went to my heart: it was as if a child
were crying.
I pushed through a thick and aromatic clump of myrtles, and peering
between the narrow leaves, perceived the cold, bright face of a little
marble god beneath willows; and, seated upon a starry bank near by,
one whom by the serpentry of her hair and the shadow of her lips I
knew to be Anthea.
"Why are you weeping?" I said.
"I was imitating a little brook," she said.
"It is late; the bat is up; yet you are alone," I said.
"Pan will protect me," she said.
"And nought else?"
She turned her face away. "None," she said. "I live among shadows.
There was a world, I dreamed, where autumn follows summer, and after
autumn, winter. Here it is always June, despite us both."
"What, then, would you have?" I said.
"Ask him," she replied.
But the little god looking sidelong was mute in his grey regard.
"Why do you not run away? What keeps you here?"
"You ask many questions, stranger! Who can escape? To live is to
remember.
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