She began, and told me a strange tale, which, likewise, I
cannot recollect; but which, at every turn and every pause, somehow or
other fixed my eyes and thoughts upon her extreme beauty; seeming always
to culminate in something that had a relation, revealed or hidden, but
always operative, with her own loveliness. I lay entranced. It was a
tale which brings back a feeling as of snows and tempests; torrents
and water-sprites; lovers parted for long, and meeting at last; with a
gorgeous summer night to close up the whole. I listened till she and I
were blended with the tale; till she and I were the whole history. And
we had met at last in this same cave of greenery, while the summer night
hung round us heavy with love, and the odours that crept through the
silence from the sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world
that invaded our solitude. What followed I cannot clearly remember. The
succeeding horror almost obliterated it. I woke as a grey dawn stole
into the cave. The damsel had disappeared; but in the shrubbery, at the
mouth of the cave, stood a strange horrible object. It looked like an
open coffin set up on one end; only that the part for the head and
neck was defined from the shoulder-part. In fact, it was a rough
representation of the human frame, only hollow, as if made of decaying
bark torn from a tree.
It had arms, which were only slightly seamed, down from the
shoulder-blade by the elbow, as if the bark had healed again from the
cut of a knife. But the arms moved, and the hand and the fingers were
tearing asunder a long silky tress of hair. The thing turned round--it
had for a face and front those of my enchantress, but now of a pale
greenish hue in the light of the morning, and with dead lustreless eyes.
In the horror of the moment, another fear invaded me. I put my hand to
my waist, and found indeed that my girdle of beech-leaves was gone.
Hair again in her hands, she was tearing it fiercely. Once more, as she
turned, she laughed a low laugh, but now full of scorn and derision; and
then she said, as if to a companion with whom she had been talking while
I slept, "There he is; you can take him now." I lay still, petrified
with dismay and fear; for I now saw another figure beside her, which,
although vague and indistinct, I yet recognised but too well. It was the
Ash-tree. My beauty was the Maid of the Alder! and she was giving
me, spoiled of my only availing defence, into the hands of bent his
Gorgon-head, and entered the cave. I could not stir. He drew near me.