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His dark, closely grown eyebrows and black wavy hair, unspoiled by headgear, gave him the wild look of a wood-sprite. "Dear boy, where do you come from?" asked Elisaveta. Kirsha eyed the sisters with an attentive, direct, and innocent gaze. He said: "I am Kirsha Trirodov. Follow this path, and you'll find yourselves where you want to go. I'll go ahead of you." He turned and walked on.
They turned upon him, the Spanish gentleman bowed, and he saw that Chiquita's little white-gloved hand was extended toward him. She was the same dainty, desirous maid he had met in the forest, but now splendidly radiant and perfect beyond his imagining. She was no longer the simple wood-sprite, but a tiny princess in filmy white, moulded by some master craftsman.
Surely if a wood-nymph or fairy were to appear to him here in this lonely forest, it would hardly seem strange. So he summoned up his courage and addressed the wood-spirit as he thought. "Who are you? Where are you?" he said. "Be you wood-sprite or fairy, I fear you not. I am ready to do your bidding; for your sweet voice and your distress have touched my heart: appear, O appear!"
"Twenty-five down already, and the axe as light as ever!" The cuckoo called. The young man looked toward the top of the hill. "A wonderful spring," he thought. "Never have the trees flowered so blood-red and bright, nor the brook sung so merrily, nor the cuckoo called so near. 'T would be no surprise to see the wood-sprite herself come out from the trees." He rested his head in his hands.
So hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally conjuring up the antidote face of the wood-sprite before he was to undergo it.
Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the wood-sprite was a flitted vapour; he longed to be below there, observing Abrane and Potts and the philosopher confounded, and the legible placidity of Countess Livia. Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, impatient of the solitudes, till night, when, according to his guess, the ladies were at their robing.
Was there ever such a ravishing little wood-sprite? And her sweet, hesitating accent that rang in his ears! How could human tongue make such caressing music of the harshest language on the globe? She had called him "Senor Antonio," and invited him to come again to-morrow. Would he come? He doubted his ability to wait so long. Knowing that she agreed to the tryst, no power on earth could deter him.
Then there were certain ancient traditions which might have been lessened in bulk and improved in quality by being subjected to searching historical criticism. More than once, for instance, a leshie, or wood-sprite, had been seen in the neighbourhood; and in several households the domovoi, or brownie, had been known to play strange pranks until he was properly propitiated.
Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the wood-sprite was a flitted vapour; he longed to be below there, observing Abrane and Potts and the philosopher confounded, and the legible placidity of Countess Livia. Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, impatient of the solitudes, till night, when, according to his guess, the ladies were at their robing.
So hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally conjuring up the antidote face of the wood-sprite before he was to undergo it.
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