like heads, their slender hands hold aloft wreaths and cymbals, and laughter, sparkling, Olympian laughter, comes leaping, dancing with them. . . .
Before them moves a goddess. She is taller and fairer than the rest; a quiver on her shoulder, a bow in her hands, a silvery crescent moon on her floating tresses. . . .
'Diana, is it thou?'
But suddenly the goddess stopped . . . and at once all the nymphs following her stopped. The ringing laughter died away.
I see the face of the hushed goddess overspread with a deadly pallor; I saw her feet grew rooted to the ground, her lips parted in unutterable horror; her eyes grew wide, fixed on the distance . . . What had she seen? What was she gazing upon?
I turned where she was gazing . . .
And on the distant sky-line, above the low strip of fields, gleamed, like a point of fire the golden cross on the white bell-tower of a Christian church. . . . That cross the goddess had caught sight of.
I heard behind me a long, broken sigh, like the quiver of a broken string, and when I turned again, no trace was left of the nymphs. . . . The broad forest was green as before, and only here and there among the thick network
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