The dryad

She extended her hand, which Argathona took and feigned to salute. Then, swiftly, the wood-nymph turned and passed from the silken tent into the meadow. As the dryad came into the liberal air she breathed a great breath. It seemed to the daughter of the forest as if she had escaped from some strange place where subtle poison guising like sweet odor saturated the atmosphere and murdered all wholesome thoughts. She stretched her arms joyously, as one released from cramping labor, and, smiling to think that so far the woodland guile had triumphed, she moved towards her own pavilion. Instantly she was aware that the field which she had expected to find deserted still presented a scene of animation. Duke Baldwin with a little cloud of knights and courtiers about him was slowly tramping towards his palace with an angry gloom upon his countenance, which was reflected in varying shades of obsequious sympathy upon the faces of those who followed him. A little removed from these a gigantic soldier moved slowly across the field, his vacant, honest face overcast with melancholy. Still farther off she could see Simon standing in front of her pavilion, carefully counting gold pieces from one hand into the other and whistling blithely to himself. By the time she had reached her squire Duke Baldwin and his courtiers had disappeared from the field, the gigantic soldier had vanished, and the lists were vacant save for herself and Simon.