A moment of intense thought. She gazed and gazed, bewitched. Then she gave, or tried to give, a little laugh. It did not sound. “Oh,” she tried to say, “how queer I feel! I believe I never felt so queer.” And indeed she did feel queer. For she felt the feeling of speaking to her heart. She was talking, it seemed to her, loudly, but when, even in the midst of her talk, she listened, nothing sounded.
After a few seconds, it seemed, she ran on, leaping through the wet. Raindrops gathered on the ferns and the flowers of her dress, outlining them with the pearly water. She looked like a rain-fairy. Hour after hour passed, and she went like the wind itself; yet she did not tire. At last she found herself near the foot of that wondrous mountain, shimmering with snowfields, cold white against a deepening night sky.
That night a bird of modest wood-colour, with speckled breast, sang of moonlight; and, rippling faintly, softly, came echoes from his silver-tongued mate. They sang, and they answered, and the moon-frost-tipped pines were quiet, and clouds floated near, snowy palaces of silence. Spellbound, Eepersip was borne away to fairy kingdoms where she danced and where birds sang the only melody in the world.
The next morning the sun came out and shone through every raindrop in splendid crimsons and purple-greens. Eepersip looked about her and discovered a little plant with a peculiar flower of white and crimson. She found that its leaves were quite delicious, unlike anything that she had had in the meadow or by the shore of the sea. They were green—a strange pale green, delicately outlined and veined in marble white and pale gold. Eepersip loved their pleasant flavour, but could not bear to touch them, they were so beautiful.
Then she looked up and beheld the strange rough outline of the mountain, and far in the distance, almost on the top, was a great snowfield, on which the sun shone directly, covering it incredibly with brilliant tints and shades of gold. And, oh, the bright green foliage, shining in the dear golden light!
“Fairyland!” whispered Eepersip. “I loved the meadow, I loved the sea more, but even before I am really in the mountains, I love them the best of all.” Then, after a pause, she added: “That snowfield of gold, these heavenly little flowers—oh, such beauty!”
After a few more moments of breathless gazing, gazing upon everything, she started up the mountain. The first few hundred yards she followed a faintly marked trail which led through dense woods, over great boulders covered with dark green moss. Occasionally a little rushing brook trickled across her path. For quite a way Eepersip kept climbing over the huge boulders, and the path was very mossy. After a while it began to grow fainter and harder to follow, and at last it was shut off entirely by the thick bushes and trees which surrounded it. Here she sat down to rest and to think a while.
She looked about and came upon a bubbling spring, at which she drank. No water she had ever found was like this. It tasted of the strong, delicious mountain air. She drank deeply, and, when she had quenched her thirst, continued her way. Here flowers which made her think of foam at sea—white, starlike, with silver-tipped petals—twined themselves among the trees mingled with wild roses—dawn-flowers of deep pink or sun-bright yellow. Strange orchids grew about, many of them pure white and fringed like fluffy clouds. One had green blossoms with long whitish spurs—mystic flowers on tall spikes with two smooth leaves. Yellow lady-slippers made her think of butterflies with folded wings, or of the sun peeping out from dark clouds. But the loveliest of all were pink orchids—hosts of them with more deeply tinted lips fringed like fairies’ fingers: hosts of them on slender stems, each stem a dawn-sprite’s wand.
“Like the dawn I saw once,” she thought, “when snow-pink fringey flowers wreathed the sky. The sun was pleased and smiled. I danced for him, and the bobolinks and skylarks greeted him with song.” There were tall flowers, too, pink silk beneath white tissue, with very dark and curious leaves up the stalks among the blossoms. Butterflies were playing like sun rays, winging softly from flower to flower. And as she went on she passed through forests of thick bushes and poisonous thorns, open pine-groves, and great pastures smelling of hay-scented ferns and budding steeple-bush. All the time the path, or rather the easiest way through the thick bushes, had been fairly level, but now it began to shoot up steeply, and it was all Eepersip could do to keep herself from sliding back in an avalanche of pebbles and stones. A bit of tough scrambling followed, and at last she broke out on a comparatively level piece of ground on one side of which was a deep ravine in which she heard a brook rushing and rippling. On the other side of the ravine was a peak of the mountain, crowned with snow and with the sun flashing upon it.
Eepersip longed to see the brook, which, by the sound, she judged to be quite large. She was not actually afraid to go down over those steep walls of dirt and sand, but she was rather afraid that, once being down, she would not be able to get up again. So on she went, and it grew so steep that, even by digging her feet into every crevice and clutching the roots of the trees, which were getting much scarcer and more stunted, she could just manage to cling on.
But at last a change came. She stood on that high peak, on which there were only bare rocks and a little snow, no roots or plants. On either side it went down, down, and it was getting late in the afternoon. She could see nothing to do. Still the highest peak
