Simon sat up and rubbed his eyes while he stared back at the damsel. At first he thought that he must unawares have slipped into sleep and that he was still dreaming. Primarily he had heard no sound of footsteps through the wood; further, the girl who faced him was radiantly unlike any woman he had ever seen--and Simon in his time had seen many women. To begin with, she was taller than is the wont of womanhood, seeming tall even to him, who carried four inches over six feet. This was the first thought in Simon's drowsy mind, surprise at the stranger's height; the next, as his brain escaped from the nets and snares of sleep, was conviction that the stranger's face was fairer than any woman's face he had ever seen awake or dreaming. It was beautiful with an unfamiliar type of beauty, though he remembered dimly some ancient statues once seen and little heeded in the garden of a house of pleasure in Byzantium whose features were like the features of this woman. Her head was nobly set upon her neck; her yellow hair was gathered into a knot above the nape; her eyes shone with the most wonderful, changeful blue--they were like the sea, they were like the sky, they were like the waters of forest fountains, the floods of mountain streams. Her comely, upright body was clothed in a kind of smock of white stuff girdled about her middle with a golden girdle of ancient handicraft; her arms were bare from the shoulder; her legs were bare from the knees; her feet were shod with sandals of leather. From the smoothness of her cheeks, from the soft color of her lips, from the slimness of her limbs, from the firm swell of her breasts beneath the fine garment, Simon would have guessed her age to be eighteen or thereabouts. Yet she seemed at once child, girl, and woman, with something boyish, too, in the firmness of her forms, in her balanced carriage, supple as an athlete's, in her air of alert repose. Never had he seen anything so vividly young; the very spirit of youth and joyousness seemed to shine in her glance, to hover on her lips, to quiver about her body as summer air quivers with the heat. Her naked arms, her naked legs were neither tanned by the sun nor stained with forest-travel; on the strong fingers of her fine hands the nails were clear-pink as sea-shells; through the candor of her skin he could see the blue veins wander. She held a bough of myrtle in her right hand, and played with it as she gazed at the man on the grass, and a childlike mirth danced in her kind, wise eyes. Her sweet mouth smiled at his awakening senses, and then she spoke--and here was a marvel! He knew what she said as well as if she were his countrywoman, and yet--it was odd--and yet she did not seem to speak as folk spoke any French that he had ever heard from salt Normandy to the Spanish hills.
"Good-evening, traveller," the girl said, and at the sound of her salutation Simon knew that he was not dreaming but wide awake, and he scrambled clumsily to his feet.
"Saints and angels!" he ejaculated, crossing himself.
The girl laughed, and her laughter was as pleasant as the tinkling of sheep-bells in a meadow.
"Do not be fearful, friend," she said, in that same flowing, unfamiliar, appreciable speech; "I will do you no harm."
Hearing this astonishing promise, Simon was quite himself again. That a lass should pledge her word not to hurt him was hugely amusing.
"No, I should guess not, prettykin," he guffawed. "But what does a fair maid in this forest?"
The girl's forehead wrinkled a little in displeasure as the bray of his laughter jarred the serenity of the cloistered trees.
"I live in the forest," she answered.
Simon stared anew at her white arms, her white legs, her unscorched face and unstained raiment.
"I live here all alone, too, save for the birds and the beasts and the trees and the flowers. The foolish Athenians are so fearful of the forest that they never come near its kindly shelter. You are not an Athenian?"
Simon shook his head stoutly.
"No, I thank Heaven," he said; "I am a Frenchman from Rouen." He spoke with a proper pride.
"I thought you could not be," the girl said, gravely, "when I saw you lying so at your ease on the grass and heard you snoring. No Athenian would do that."
Simon reddened a little. Frenchman of Rouen though he was, he had this in common with lesser men: he resented the imputation of snoring.
"Do no Athenians snore?" he questioned, grumpily. The girl laughed again.
"Nay," she said, demurely, "I meant that no Athenian would lie here in the twilight. I have seen no one sleeping in these shades for ages, though I have lived in the forest all my life."
"No great slice of time, I take it," Simon suggested, gallantly. His slow mind was much puzzled by the maid, but his quick flesh was enamoured and he was much the body-servant. The girl looked at him thoughtfully.
"Longer than you think. I cannot tell how often I have seen spring swell into summer, mellow into autumn, and descend into winter, for the years in their seasons are alike to me; but, I suppose, more than a thousand times."
Simon stared agape.
"More than a thousand times? Pray, how old may you be, young woman?"
"I cannot tell," the girl answered, thoughtfully. "I do not think of time. Why should I, being come to my full growth? Time will change me no more. I shall be as I am for always."
Simon frowned in dubiety.
"What is your name, young woman, and where do you belong?"
"My name is Argathona. I belong to the forest. I am a dryad."
Simon's education had been something neglected, and he had no idea what a dryad might be. But he was always superstitious, and now suddenly suspicious.
"Are you a fairy?" he gasped, fearfully.
Argathona shook her head, and waved the myrtle-bough as if to dissipate his fears.
"I have naught to do with the fairies, nor they with me. I am the daughter of a dryad, but my father was a mortal man."
"Like me," Simon suggested. Simon plumed himself on his good looks, but the dryad disagreed.
"I do not think he can have been like you, for my mother said he was beautiful."
Simplicity's frank arrow quivered in vanity's ample target. Simon swallowed an oath.
"Oh, oh," he thought, "this is some rustic minx who is making game of me. Well, I'll humor her whimsy; perhaps we may end with a kiss." He went on aloud, "When were you born, bonnie lassie?"
"Long ago," the girl answered, gravely, "when the old gods still dwelt in Hellas."
Simon's bulk was as full of stifled laughter as a pillow is full of feathers.
"Perhaps you remember the old gods," he hinted, with a grin. The girl's calm eyes widened with wonder at his folly.
"Assuredly I do. How could I forget my earliest friends? They loved me so dearly that though I was the child of a mortal they gave me the gift of immortal youth."
Simon gave a long whistle.
"So you are immortal?"
"My mother was a true dryad," Argathona answered, "born in a tree, living the tree's life, and dying when the tree died. But she loved an Athenian and bore me, and as there was no tree in all the woodland that I could call my own, Zeus gave me this gift to live forever so long as a tree should grow in Greece."
"And your parents?" Simon inquired, politely. He was so taken with the girl that he would not quarrel with her crazy tale.
"My father died long ages ago," Argathona said, "when I was a baby. He died in fight upon the plain of Troy, died by the hand of Paris, the lover of Helena. Hermes brought the news to my mother here in the wood, and my mother wept sorely and sighed in vain to die. This was long ago, long before the time came for the gods to go."
She sighed as she spoke, as one who lingers with tender, pathetic memories. Simon continued his humoring, though the girl was flagrantly insane.
"When was that, pray you?"
"I cannot truly tell you. I was but a child, and had seen no more than some few hundred summers. They were banished, all the beautiful gods, into the twilight, into the Hollow Land. They came to say us farewell, the great gods, the Cloud-Compeller and his queen, and the Lord of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon and sea-born Aphrodite and Virgin Athena and all the Olympians with them. They rode away in a noble company, and I stood with my mother under the shade of my mother's oak and watched them as they went."
This was more than Simon could patiently stomach, and he let some laughter slip.
"Of course you expect me to believe all this?" he chuckled, irreverently. The dryad answered him tranquilly.
"Why should I deceive you, mortal? My mother could not leave her oak, so the gods would have taken me to dwell in the Twilight Land, but I would not leave my mother, and we lost the adorable gods and lingered here in the greenwood. Here my mother taught me all the woodland arts, woodcraft, and glamour, and the speech of the beasts and the meaning of what the birds sing and the trees whisper, and the properties of the plants for heal and for hurt, and how to weave and spin and be familiar with the stars--and all the things that it is needful for a dryad to know. But soon my mother vanished as a mist of the morning, for the oak grew old and withered, and its time had come and hers. I have lived here all alone ever since."
"All alone!" Simon echoed, sceptically, and "All alone!" the white child repeated simply. There was no sound of sadness in her voice, no shadow of sadness in her eyes. She spoke of strange things as naturally as Simon would have talked of his breakfast or his boots or any other workaday matter. Cunning leered in Simon's eyes, cunning lurked in Simon's voice as he chuckled his next question:
"No mortal lover?"
Argathona answered him with a grave simplicity that took the sting out of his sneer.
"I have never left this greenwood; I have never longed to leave it. What use were it for me to make friends with your race who die in a day?"
"Excuse me," Simon interpolated; for Simon was thirty years old, and hoped to live to ninety, but the dryad took no heed of his interruption.
"For many generations few mortals have come to this forest; none, I think, since Alexander died."
"That was not the day before yesterday, neither," Simon commented. He was wondering if the maid were truly mad or merely a piece of mystification. Anyway, she was very fair, the grass was soft, the night air kindly, a rising moon smiled through the trees, and Simon was always ripe for love-making.
"Sweeting," he began, jovially, "if you have never loved mortal man it is high time that you quarrel with this continence, and though I do not greatly credit your tale, I am ready to woo you merrily."
It is always disconcerting to a swain, be he sentimentalist or sensualist, to find that his proposals of passion are entertained with hilarity. So it was with Simon when the girl greeted him with a peal of the cheerfulest laughter that ever had rattled about his ears, while she swayed on her shapely legs like a bell-flower to a breeze. So children laugh at their play; so gods laugh at the muddles of mortals, bright, sweet, whole-hearted laughter, brilliant as the songs of birds.
"You foolish Bœotian," she said, when a pause in her laughter left her breath to speak, "you do not think I would welcome your wooing?" And once again the musical gusts of merriment shook her, and her eyes danced and her whole body trembled with delight.
Simon glowered at her, very red-faced, very sulky, very hot on his purpose. He had overcrowed coy reluctance ere this.
"Welcome or no welcome," he cried, "I mean to clip you in my arms. The forest is silent, you are my prize, you shall follow your mother's example."
He made a step towards the girl as he spoke, with his face as red as a peony, and stretched out his big, brown hands to seize her white body. To his surprise she made no effort to evade him, and for one wild moment it was pleasure to clasp her soft body close to his; but before he had time to turn his clasp into an embrace he found himself, to his bewilderment, plucked from the ground as if he had been caught in the clutch of a whirlwind, and then in another astonishing instant he realized that the maiden had flung him from her as if his mighty mass of manhood had been no bulkier than a cradled doll, and that he was travelling rapidly through the air towards his mother earth. Then he countered the ground with a prodigious thump that seemed to squelch the breath out of his lungs and to shake every bone and strain every sinew of his body. Sick and dizzy and all of an ache he lay on his back on the grass, rigid as a man in a catalepsy, and staring in unfamiliar terror at the maiden, whose beautiful face was suddenly fierce with anger.
"You fool," she cried, "learn that I rule in this forest. I have dealt thus gently with you for this once"--Simon groaned inwardly as she said this, and wondered if he had a whole bone left in his body--"but if you vex me again I shall be tempted to do you some hurt."
Simon made an effort to move, and the effort hurt him sorely, and he marvelled at the girl's ideas of gentleness and hurting. The Olympian sternness of Argathona's brow softened a little at the sight of that supine image of misery.
"Will you promise to offend no more?" she asked, and Simon cried back at her, speaking from the very core of his heart:
"I promise."
The dryad's frown faded, her serene calm rekindled.
"You will do well to keep your word," she said, merrily, "for my sinews are knit with the vigor of the Age of Gold, and I have no need to fear the children of men."
"As to that," Simon protested, as stoutly as he could under the somewhat undignified conditions, "I have my failings, it may be, but I am an honest soldier, and I never broke my word in my life."
"Then get on your feet again," said Argathona, gently, and she reached out her hands to his, extended, and lifted him up standing as easily as if he had been a baby; and at the touch of her fingers Simon felt instantly that his blood was running anew and that the chill which gripped at his heart dissolved before the flame of life revived. He made to stretch his stiff arms, and found to his joy that he succeeded. He moved his legs this way and that with a painful relish in their obedience. It was good to find himself still all of a piece.
"Ah," he sighed, "how stiff I be! It is tedious to feel like a tree."
Argathona's brows knitted slightly, and Simon saw that he had bungled, and tried to gloss his blunder. He had no doubt now as to his companion's powers if he still questioned her narrative, and he thought it well to show respect to her alleged sylvan kinship.
"Of course, there are trees and trees--" he began to stammer, but the dryad with a whisk of her myrtle twig warned him to keep his peace, and he shut his mouth tightly. She sat comfortably down upon the turf, crossing her legs under her as a lad might, and motioned to him to take his ease. Simon gingerly lowered himself to the ground with his chin in his hand. He was not a little afraid of the amazing maid, for which he was scarcely to be blamed; but he was also heartily her admirer, for which he was wholly to be commended. She stared at him and smiled, and Simon stared at her and rubbed his head wistfully.
"Here is a wonder out of a wood," he said. "May the devil fly away with me if I know what to make of you."
"There is nothing to wonder at," Argathona answered, gravely. "I belong to the old, strong race, the kin of the gods, and the strength of the gods runs in my body though my sire was a mortal man. Also I know something of the secrets of the ancient wood. Otherwise I am like yourself, thinking the same thoughts, living the same life, sharing the same pleasures of hunger and thirst, sleep and waking, and the change of the seasons. The only difference is that there will come a time when none of these things can live for you, and that time will never come for me. I shall go on with the dawn and the sunset and the wheeling stars and the changing seasons and the perpetual years."
"The difference is a pretty big one," Simon grunted; "but let that pass."
He looked at the girl curiously; he was now quite prepared to be devoted to her, though he was also quite prepared to believe her a witch. There were witches and witches, and this seemed an honest one. But her claim to endless existence bewildered him. He admitted to himself that it would sound very pleasant if applied to his own case. It must be agreeable, he thought, to go on cheerfully eating and drinking and making love, and fighting and sleeping and gaming and riding a-horseback and experiencing all the other enjoyable processes appertaining to a strong man's life, day in and day out, year in and year out through the centuries, with never any fear of finding wine and love and pastime uninteresting or condemned to end. At least, the maid was not making game of him; she was fixed in her strange story; and, anyway, he was pledged her friend.
"There is one thing that puzzles me," he said, bluntly--"how does it happen that you, who have lived in this wood since your old friends the gods decamped from paradise, and who talk, as I should think, the jargon of ancient days, can converse with me, who remember no more than thirty summers and was born over-seas in France?"
Argathona smiled amiably at his quandary.
"It is given to us," she said, "who are kindred with the gods, to say in our speech the thoughts of all men, and to understand with our ears the thoughts of all men. When you speak I hear your meaning in the words of the woodland, and when I speak to you my meaning takes possession of you and you shape it for yourself into the usage of your familiar speech, and so it will be for me always, wherever I go."
Simon nodded. If this were so he could understand that something in her utterance which seemed alien and quaint to him. Here truly was a gift scarcely less enviable than the grace of perdurable life. Argathona interrupted his meditations.
"You have asked me many questions," she said, looking straightly at him from under level brows; "now answer some for me. Is it the manner of mortal man to make love in your fashion?"
Simon looked awkward and fumbled with his beard.
"There are many ways of making love," he confessed. "Some are more formal," he admitted, after a moment's pause.
The nymph looked thoughtful.
"Such would please me better," she said. She eyed Simon circumspectly, then questioned, suddenly, "Why do you carry that lantern?"
Simon unhooked it from his girdle and held it at arm's-length, a formidable piece of furniture for a traveller.
"There was some fellow of old time did the like for my reason--looking for an honest man or an honest woman."
The dryad smiled at memories.
"I have heard of that; it was a mad Athenian called Diogenes."
"I care not what his name was," said Simon, "but I like his humor and I follow his quest. Not that the lantern is of much use to me in the daytime, but it shows my good faith."
"Have you found no honest folk?" Argathona asked, sympathetically. Simon shook his red head.
"Never since I came to these regions of Greece," Simon protested. "There were honest folk in Rouen, or, at least, I used to think so. Alain, the armorer, he was an honest man. He made this blade," and Simon patted the stout sword at his side. "I never met with a better. But since I came to Corinth to serve the duke I have found no honest soul or body."
Argathona gave a little shiver.
"I am glad that I dwell here in the greenwood, and not with your clan."
Simon rambled on with his narrative.
"When I came to these parts I still had the bulk of a pretty little patrimony. Where is it now? Every light o' love in Corinth has filched her bit of it; every cozener with the dice has picked his share. While I was rich my friends fawned on me; when I fell poor they turned their backs, lads and lassies. I have written some rhymes on my misfortune."
He paused, hoping that the maid might ask to hear them, but as she did no such thing he resumed, plaintively:
"So now I trample this planet seeking an honest human."
"Do you hope to find such in Athens?" Argathona asked.
She was quite interested in this queer, russet-colored man, with his wild words and his wild wits--as interested as she would be if she came upon some new kind of fawn or unfamiliar moth in the forest. Simon grunted uncertainly.
"I have my doubts," he said, "though every great lord and every little lord in Attica will be there. But I do not go to Athens solely to that end. I hope to find service with the Duke of Athens, who loves, so they tell me, such stout fellows as I be."
He stretched his great arms apart as he spoke, in pride at their mighty muscles. Then, remembering how little their strength had availed him against the witchery of the nymph, he grinned a thought sheepishly. But Argathona was honestly admiring his force, and only pitying him for not being comely. They sat for a moment looking at each other, thinking their own thoughts. About them all was very still in the moonlight, silence only troubled by the wheeling of bats and the droning of insects. Suddenly from the distance came loud shouts, furious cries, and then the angry clash of steel on steel and the clattering of a horse's hoofs in furious flight.
