"
And gazing down at her command through the clear green into the luminous
depths below, he caught glimpses of these gardens of the sea where
goldfish darted like tropical birds among the branches of tall tree-like
stalks of swaying seaweed, and strange shapes of jade and blue floated
in the shadows.
"Is it not wonderful?" she asked.
"It is indeed, my Wildenai," he answered earnestly. "Never in all my
travels, methinks, have I seen aught before like this your island here!
It seems to me indeed a charmed land, a kind of magic isle!"
One day it rained, the last belated rain of winter. But even the storm
brought pleasures of its own, for, seated on the pile of skins beside
him, the little gray fox curled contentedly at her feet, Wildenai worked
at her loom. Within its dull-colored warp a blanket, woven in a strange
design of mingled red, and black, and white, grew slowly beneath her
busy fingers.
For hours the maiden drew the short woolen threads in and out while the
young man, stretched lazily upon the ground, told her many a tale of the
England he had left. Then, quite without warning, she ceased her work
and sat pensively watching through the opening in the rocks the long
gray swell of the sea.
"And what is it now, my princess?" laughed young Harold.
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