Once a month perhaps she would knock at my outermost door, which I mostly kept locked when at home, bringing me a sumptuously-dressed, highly-spiced red trout or grayling, which I had not the heart to refuse, and exquisitely she does them, all hot and spiced, applying apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress; and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly from the two islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did not long confine ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to every variety of manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with three-triangle flights and sliding lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing with the sail for salmon, live-baiting with the float for pike, daping with bluebottles, casting with artificial flies, and I could not say in which she became the most carelessly adept, for all soon seemed as old and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth.
On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent health: a day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I forget now what circumstance had caused me to mention the date long beforehand in, I think, Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any count of it, nor was I even sure that my calendar was not faulty by a day. But at ten in the morning of what I called the 21st, descending by my private spiral in flannels with some trout and par bait, and tackle—I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly right to be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers.
I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in rather a frippery of mousseline de soie, all cream-laced, with wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings—a divinely pale pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she smelled like heaven, God knows.
I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and pallid:
“It is the day!”
“I—perhaps—” I said, or some incoherency like that.
I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my manner.
“I have not done long again?” she asked, looking down, breaking another silence.
“No, no, oh no,” said I hurriedly: “not done wrong again. Only, I could not suppose that you would count up the days. You are … considerate. Perhaps—but—”
“Tell Leda?”
“Perhaps. … I was going to say … you might come fishing with me. …”
“O luck!” she went softly.
I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredible weakness: but I could not at all help it.
I took the flowers, and we went down to the south side, where my boat lay; I threw out some of the fish from the well; arranged the tackle, and then the stern cushions for her; got up the sails; and out we went, she steering, I in the bows, with every possible inch of space between us, receiving delicious intermittent whiffs from her of ambergris, frangipane, or some blending of perfumes, the morning being bright and hot, with very little breeze on the water, which looked mottled, like colourless water imperfectly mixed with indigo-wash, we making little headway; so it was some time before I moved nearer her to get the par for fixing on the three-triangle flight, for I was going to trail for salmon or large lake-trout; and during all that time we spoke not a word together.
Afterwards I said:
“Who told you that flowers are proper to birthdays? or that birthdays are of any importance?”
“I suppose that nothing can happen so important as birth,” says she: “and perfumes must be ploper to birth, because the wise men blought spices to the young Jesus.”
This naivete was the cause of my immediate recovery: for to laugh is to be saved: and I laughed right out, saying:
“But you read the Bible too much! all your notions are biblical. You should read the quite modern books.”
“I have tlied,” says she: “but I cannot lead them long, nor often. The whole world seems to have got so collupted. It makes me shudder.”
“Ah, well now, you see, you quite come round to my point of view,” said I.
“Yes, and no,” says she: “they had got so spoiled, that is all. Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted—the plainest tluths they could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them in their stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor, must have been gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties withered: as I can imagine a person with one eye seeing double thlough it, and quite blind on the other side.”
“Ah,” said I, “I do not think they even wanted to see on the other side. There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among them, you know: and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing one or two of their old man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could greatly
