The Quest of the Golden Girl | Page 6

pool.
"The Golden Girl," I answered simply, turning my head, and looking
half sideways and half upwards; and behold! the tree at whose foot I lay
had opened its rocky side, and in the cleft, like a long lily-bud sliding
from its green sheath, stood a dryad, and my speech failed and my
breath went as I looked upon her beauty, for which mortality has no
simile. Yet was there something about her of the earth-sweetness that
clings even to the loveliest, star-ambitious, earth- born thing. She was
not all immortal, as man is not all mortal. She was the sweetness of the
strength of the oak, the soul born of the sun kissing its green leaves in
the still Memnonian mornings, of moon and stars kissing its green
leaves in the still Trophonian nights.
"The maid you seek," said she, and again she broke the silence like the
moon breaking through the clouds, "what manner of maid is she? For a
maid abides in this wood, maybe it is she whom you seek. Is she but a
lovely face you seek? Is she but a lofty mind? Is she but a beautiful
soul?"
"Maybe she is all these, though no one only, and more besides," I
answered.
"It is well," she replied, "but have you in your heart no image of her
you seek? Else how should you know her should you some day come to
meet her?"
"I have no image of her," I said. "I cannot picture her; but I shall know
her, know her inerrably as these your wood children find out each other
untaught, as the butterfly that has never seen his kindred knows his
painted mate, passing on the wing all others by. Only when the lark
shall mate with the nightingale, and the honey-bee and the clock-beetle
keep house together, shall I wed another maid. Fair maybe she will not
be, though fair to me. Wise maybe she will not be, though wise to me.
For riches I care not, and of her kindred I have no care. All I know is

that just to sit by her will be bliss, just to touch her bliss, just to hear
her speak bliss beyond all mortal telling."
Thereat the Sweetness of the Strength of the Oak smiled upon me and
said,--
"Follow yonder green path till it leads you into a little grassy glade,
where is a crystal well and a hut of woven boughs hard by, and you
shall see her whom you seek."
And as she spoke she faded suddenly, and the side of the oak was once
more as the solid rock. With hot heart I took the green winding path,
and presently came the little grassy glade, and the bubbling crystal well,
and the hut of wattled boughs, and, looking through the open door of
the hut, I saw a lovely girl lying asleep in her golden hair. She smiled
sweetly in her sleep, and stretched out her arms softly, as though to
enfold the dear head of her lover. And, ere I knew, I was bending over
her, and as her sweet breath came and went I whispered: "Grace o' God,
I am here. I have sought you through the world, and found you at last.
Grace o' God, I have come."
And then I thought her great eyes opened, as when the sun sweeps clear
blue spaces in the morning sky. "Flower o' Men," then said she, low
and sweet,--"Flower o' Men, is it you indeed? As you have sought, so
have I waited, waited . . ." And thereat her arms stole round my neck,
and I awoke, and Grace o' God was suddenly no more than a pretty
name that my dream had given me.
"A pretty dream," said my soul, "though a little boyish for thirty." "And
a most excellent sherry," added my body.
CHAPTER V
CONCERNING THE PERFECT WOMAN, AND THEREFORE
CONCERNING ALL FEMININE READERS
As I once more got under way, my thoughts slowly loitered back to the
theme which had been occupying them before I dropped asleep. What

was my working hypothesis of the Perfect Woman, towards whom I
was thus leisurely strolling? She might be defined, I reflected, as The
Woman Who Is Worthy Of Us; but the improbability which every
healthily conceited young man must feel of ever finding such a one
made the definition seem a little unserviceable. Or, if you prefer, since
we seem to be dealing with impossibles, we might turn about and more
truly define her as The Woman of Whom We are Worthy, for who dare
say that she exists? If, again, she were defined as the Woman our More
Fortunate Friend Marries, her unapproachableness would rob the
definition of any practical value. Other generalisations proving equally