Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/195

 freedom as of winds and waves and birds—and a vague love for that unknown people whose wild blood made fever in my veins,—until one starless night I fled my home forever. "I slumbered in the woods at last; the birds were singing in the emerald shadows above when I awoke. A tall girl, lithe as a palm, swarthy as Egypt, was gazing upon me. My heart almost ceased to beat. I beheld in the wild beauty of her dark face as it were the shadow of the face that had haunted me; and in the midnight of her eyes the eyes of my dream. Circles of thin gold were in her ears;—her brown arms and feet were bare. She smiled not; but, keeping her great wild eyes fixed upon mine, addressed me in a strange tongue. Strange as India—yet not all strange to me; for at the sound of its savage syllables dusky chambers of memory long unvisited reopened their doors and revealed forgotten things. The tongue was the tongue spoken to me in dreams through all those restless years. And she, perceiving that I understood,