LOVELY were the Mallan valleys where the woods came down to drink of the golden meads. The trees clambered up against the clouds, wild yet imperturbable, silent yet steeped in mysterious music that spoke to the soul. Larch and cedar, birch and pine, oak and mountain-ash stood as on the slopes of a great amphitheatre and watched the Mallan moving to the sea. Willows dipped their branches in the stream. Gnarled, cloven oaks thrust their rough fists into the white bosoms of flowering thorns. The Mallan banks were all of gold, of golden tissue spread upon green velvet. Moon-faced daisies whitened the long, languorous grass where wild sorrel shone like flame in the western sun. The blue bloom of summer and a great stillness covered the woods.
The Mallan burned brilliant in the sun. Rippleless, it stretched a band of blackened silver betwixt its sedges. A ring of eddies, a splash of foam, or a golden gleam darting swift and evanescent through the crystal darkness told of the life below. The blue-and-white mosaics of heaven shone on its idle bosom. Dragon-flies, blue, green, and scarlet, skimmed gossamer bright over rush and flag. Gnats played in the shallows and the moorhen paddled in the shade.
Weary of whipping the irresponsive water, the girl kneeling in the grass laid down her rod and glanced at her companion under the broad brim of her rose-laden hat. A June splendor burned upon her face. Her light summer dress of some greenish and opalescent fabric hung about her figure with a cool luxuriousness, tinted as with the cold glimmer of a fading west.
“No sport,” she cried to the man down stream, in her rich, full-throated voice, a voice that seemed in keeping with the opulence of her beauty.
Ophelia smiled. Her lips were long and pleasurable, and a physical and sensuous magic seemed radiated from her figure. Her eyes fell into a contemplative stare as she watched the man draw near, swinging his fly to dry in the sun. He was bareheaded and his bronzed and handsome face shone eager to the west. His eyes had a habit of kindling when their glance lighted on the girl’s face. He was a clean-limbed man withal, supple as a young ash, sanguine, keenly sensitive, a man such as women love.