The Argosy — page 238: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Among Untrodden Ways. 221 be no doubt of it. ‘There was the wreath; so fresh and dewy, it could not have been placed there many hours. It was woven with grasses upon a willow stem. I would have touched it, but it seemed profanation ; and as I stood there the wooded hills on either hand echoed such birdsong as I had never dreamed of. I felt as if I had come into an enchanted land, and longed, yet feared to awake from my delusion. My delusion deepened upon me ; for now, amid the shrill music of the myriad birds, I heard a joyous human soprano rising and falling in an exquisite song that harmonised with the laughter of the stream, the gentle music of the rustling leaves and the bird chorus. My delusion deepened still further, for now I seemed to see my bicycle descending the valley, with my valise strapped to it, and the glinting sunlight striking on it brightly now and then. But as I gazed in a sort of stupefaction, my delusion reached its climax. That bicycle was being led by what must have been the nymph of these woods, to whom the soprano voice seemed to belong. She was dressed in green, which accounted for my not seeing her sooner, so did her robe blend with the nature-tints about her. The words of the song reached me now. ‘They were in French. [t was no delusion, then, but a reality. Victor Hugo’s poem, ‘‘ Le Papillon et la Fleur,” had never so touched me as when sung by this fresh young voice. Whether I connected that gay creature with the grave by which I was standing or not I cannot tell. A feeling of awe, akin to the supernatural, had possession of me. Had I known that the earth was going to open, I should still have stood by that grave watching her. Softly and lightly she trod the valley, her twinkling white feet seem- ing scarcely to bend the blades of grass. And between the wild snatches of her song, she laughed a laugh which the silver stream must have taught her, and stopped to touch my bicycle here and there, as a child might some new toy. Finally, she laid it against a bank, and throwing herself at full length upon the soft turf, she gazed at it, and burst into song once more. And all this time I stood beside the grave with the fresh wreath upon it, drinking in this vision of beauty. She could not be more than sixteen, and her short dress made her look even younger. How soft and mellow was the brown of her hair which streamed on the turf and over her bare arms. Hair so cared for, so well-kept in this solitary place, that it seemed to me there must yet be another here. And how exquisitely white and pink were the little feetin the shadows. ‘The bodice of her simple dress was a kind of pelerine crossed upon her breast and knotted behind, and round her white throat she wore a string of coral beads. I had time to note all this before she rose from the grass and began to experiment with her new toy. She had evidently no idea of its conmicooolks (CO