Upon all
these things, as she still sped along in the bright air, she looked
with a rapture of surprise and a joyful fainting of the heart; they
seemed so novel, they touched so strangely home, they were so hued
and scented, they were so beset and canopied by the dome of the blue
air of heaven.
At length, when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow
pool. Stones stood in it, like islands; bulrushes fringed the
coast; the floor was paved with the pine needles; and the pines
themselves, whose roots made promontories, looked down silently on
their green images. She crept to the margin and beheld herself with
wonder, a hollow and bright-eyed phantom, in the ruins of her palace
robe. The breeze now shook her image; now it would be marred with
flies; and at that she smiled; and from the fading circles, her
counterpart smiled back to her and looked kind. She sat long in the
warm sun, and pitied her bare arms that were all bruised and marred
with falling, and marvelled to see that she was dirty, and could not
grow to believe that she had gone so long in such a strange
disorder.
Then, with a sigh, she addressed herself to make a toilette by that
forest mirror, washed herself pure from all the stains of her
adventure, took off her jewels and wrapped them in her handkerchief,
re-arranged the tatters of her dress, and took down the folds of her
hair.
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