I started, and, turning sideways, saw a dim white figure seated beside an intertwining thicket of smaller trees and underwood.
"It is my white lady!" I said, and flung myself on the ground beside her; striving, through the gathering darkness, to get a glimpse of the form which had broken its marble prison at my call.
"It is your white lady!" said the sweetest voice, in reply, sending a thrill of speechless delight through a heart which all the love-charms of the preceding day and evening had been tempering for this culminating hour.

Yet, if I would have confessed it, there was something either in the sound of the voice, although it seemed sweetness itself, or else in this yielding which awaited no gradation of gentle approaches, that did not vibrate harmoniously with the beat of my inward music.

And likewise, when, taking her hand in mine, I drew closer to her, looking for the beauty of her face, which, indeed, I found too plenteously, a cold shiver ran through me; but "it is the marble," I said to myself, and heeded it not.
She withdrew her hand from mine, and after that would scarce allow me to touch her.

It seemed strange, after the fulness of her first greeting, that she could not trust me to come close to her.

Though her words were those of a lover, she kept herself withdrawn as if a mile of space interposed between us.
"Why did you run away from me when you woke in the cave ?" I said.
"Did I ?" she returned.