Of a sudden Menon started from his revery, as a round white pebble struck his knee and bounded into the lake. He looked to learn whence the missile came, but all was still. Behind him in the distance stretched the rolling hills, with herders following in the wake of drowsy sheep; to the right, the lake's rim lay in peace, barren save for a fluttering bird or two, while on the left a fringe of bush ran out on a point of rocks, too low, it seemed, to screen a human form. Still wondering, the Assyrian rubbed his knee and gazed reproachfully at the fishes in the lake, when a flute-like laugh pealed forth--a joyous, bubbly laugh--that rang along the shores till every rocky ledge took up its notes and flung a mocking echo across the waves.
Menon sprang upon a stone, to explore each nook and crevice with a hunter's circling gaze. With body bent, with every sense alert, he swept the shores for the jester's hiding place; and at last, when hope was well-nigh spent, he caught the gleam of a wind-blown lock of hair from the rocky point close down by the water's edge. Menon smiled, then seemed to become engrossed in the sight of some floating object far out upon the lake; yet, the while, from the tail of his crafty eye, he watched the point whence mischief hid as behind a shield. A silence fell. No sound was heard save the splash of plunging carp, the yelp of a shepherd's dog, and the harsh, shrill cry of a crane that passed in lazy, lumbering flight.
From the water a form rose noiselessly, while a pair of dancing eyes looked out through a leafy screen; a rounded arm was raised, and Menon wheeled and caught the second pebble as it came. For an instant the two stood motionless; the one surprised at her swift discovery, the other stricken speechless with amaze at the bold, unearthly beauty, of a water nymph.
"A goddess!" he gasped at length, and stared in the wonder of a dreamer roused from sleep.
She stood at the water's edge, a girl just budding into womanhood, her fair skin glistening with the freshness of her bath. A clinging skirt from hip to knee, revealed her slender symmetry of limb, clean, lithe, and poised for nimble flight. For the rest she was nude, save for a tumbling wealth of flame-hued locks, tossed by the rising breeze, half veiling, half disclosing, a gleaming bust and throat. Above, a witch's face, Grecian in its lines, yet dashed with the warm voluptuousness of Semitic blood; a mouth, firm, fearless in its strength, yet tempered by a reckless merriment--a mouth to harden in a tempest-gust of scorn, to quiver at the sigh of passion's prayer, or fling its light-lipped laughter in the teeth of him who prayed. Her eyes--a haunted pool of light, wherein, a man might drown his soul, and, sinking, bless his torturer.