Page 267 - Adventures in shadow-land

as it does by sunlight, but white and cool and still.
Only a bell rung at intervals from the tower of a
convent.

On a fragment of a broken capital that lay in
the water near the Island shore of Ortyggla sat

three lovely ladies. They looked young and beau­
tiful as the day, but they were very, very old.

They had known the place before the first Greek
ship bore the first Greek colonists to Sicily. The

broken capital was the last bit of a temple that had
been reared in their honor ages ago, for these were

the real sea-nymphs. They had come back from
the unknown countries where they went when men

forgot them, and the monks shattered their beauti­
ful marble statues to replace them with waxen vir*

gins dressed in tinsel. They were taking a jour­
ney just to see what sort of a place this world had

grown to be. They were all three rather low-spir­
ited— as much so as sea-nymphs can be.
“ This is all so different,” said Arethusa, “ It

was hardly sadder in the great siege; T could

hardly find the place where my fountain was
once.”