The water, the trees,
the air, were full of it. What a strange melody!
Aasa well knew that every brook and river
has its Neck, besides hosts of little water-sprites.
She had heard also that in the moonlight at
midsummer, one might chance to see them
rocking in bright little shells, playing among
the pebbles, or dancing on the large leaves of
the water-lily. And that they could sing also,
she doubted not; it was their voices she heard
through the murmuring of the brook. Aasa
eagerly bent forward and gazed down into the
water: the faint song grew louder, paused
suddenly, and sprang into life again; and its sound
was so sweet, so wonderfully alluring! Down
there in the water, where a stubborn pebble
kept chafing a precipitous little side current,
clear tiny pearl-drops would leap up from the
stream, and float half-wonderingly downward
from rapid to rapid, until they lost themselves
in the whirl of some stronger current. Thus
sat Aasa and gazed and gazed, and in one moment
she seemed to see what in the next moment
she saw not. Then a sudden great hush stole
through the forest, and in the hush she could
hear the silence calling her name. It was so
long since she had been in the forest, it seemed
ages and ages ago. She hardly knew herself;
the light seemed to be shining into her eyes as
with a will and purpose, perhaps to obliterate
something, some old dream or memory, or to
impart some new power--the power of seeing
the unseen. And this very thought, this fear of
some possible loss, brought the fading memory
back, and she pressed her hands against her
throbbing temples as if to bind and chain it
there forever; and it was he to whom her
thought returned.
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