Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/126

 was a kind of bower where she lay whole afternoons watching the ways of the birds and the beetles, the turtles and the ants. Sometimes she fell asleep, to awake only when the afternoon sun had fallen low on the prairie and the cool of evening had begun.

Today she pushed her way through the briars into the bower and flinging herself down yielded to the hunger for sleep.

It was late when she awakened slowly, aware of a faint pleasant sound of splashing somewhere near her, a sound that was cool, as if the water touched her own hot troubled brow. Slowly she sat up and looking out from the bower, she saw the cause of the noise. On the log in the midst of the stream sat Leander with his back to her, quite naked. He was splashing his feet in the water and sending it high in the air to fall down in glistening drops over his blond head and white body.

A strange, voluptuous weakness filled her body so that she could not rise. She felt that she must be dying. She knew that if she did rise she could not escape lest he notice her and know that she had seen him thus. She was frozen to the earth, fascinated and helpless, and suddenly Leander slipped into the reddish water and swam away toward the far shore. She tried to cover her face with her hands, but she could not move them to her face. On the sloping bank opposite Leander was lifting a great stone high above his head. She saw the