Peace brooded in her
soul then, and faith warmed her blood. She was sure her prayer would be
answered; she was certain that her health and her loved one would both come
back to her. And she stood by the altar and smiled at the golden morning,
herself the fairest thing the sun shone upon.
Having peeped shyly about her, Joan took off her clothes, placed them on
the altar-stones, shook down her hair, and glided softly to the stream. At
one point its waters caught the sunshine and babbled over white sand
between many budding spikes of wild parsley and young fronds of fern. Naked
and beautiful the girl stood, her bright hair glinting to her waist, all
rippled with the first red gold of the morning, her body very white save
where the sun and western wind had browned both arms and neck; her form
innocent as yet of the mystery hid for her in Time. Joan's fair limbs spoke
of blood not Cornish, of days far past when a race of giants swept up from
behind the North Sea to tread a new earth and take wives of the little dark
women of the land, abating the still prevalent nigrescence of the Celt with
Saxon eyes and hair, adding their stature and their strength to races
unborn. A sweet embodiment of all that was lovely and pure and fresh, she
looked--a human incarnation of youth and springtime.
There was a pool deeper than the general shallowness of the stream which
served for Joan's bath, and she entered there, where soft white sand made
pleasant footing for her toes, where more forget-me-nots twinkled their
turquoise about the margin, where shining gorse towered like a sentinel
above.
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