Anna Lombard, page 19 by Victoria Cross
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and then at the next step forward I stood motionless and spellbound: the girl herself was before me and unconscious of my presence asleep. In the thick, cool shade thrown by a luxuriant' Jy tangled cluster of bamboo-trees stood a low, broad, stone couch covered with thick, square velvet-and-satin cushions a Turkish divan, in fact in the open; and one prepared, evidently, with skill and care, for all round the stone base was hollowed out a groove filled to the rim with water, thus forming an impassable trench to the innumerable tree ants of enormous size, that were crawling in black ribbons over the mossy ground. And on this couch, fully extended, with arm above her head, lay the girl tranquilly asleep. Noiselessly, hardly breathing, I stepped closer andl looked down upon her. She was wearing a loose garment of white cambric that was unfastened at the neck and showed the whole of the beautiful, solid, white throat at its base, but which, of its own will apparently, closed itself completely over the softly rising and falling bosom; the head was thrown back, and her face, fresh as a flower, was upturned; the cheeks were like the petals of the wild rose, the mouth deep crimson like a pomegranate bud, and hei light hair, ruffled and loosened, fell in glistening waves over the arm beneath, white and bare for the kindly sleeve was loose and wide and had fallen back from it almost to the shoulder. So might have Aurora herself, wearied with tending the flowers, been found sleeping in the Elysian fields. I stood entranced, letting my eyes travel reverently over the sleeping form. The cambric was delicate and transparent almost as a cobweb, but its multitudinous folds veiled all but the beautiful outlines; the hem of the garment seemed lost in the flounces of lace, or perhaps these came from some other under one, and from these issued two bare white insteps, the rest of the feet being cased in little indoor shoes. Beyond those delicate white feet was quite a long space of the divan, covered with a velvet cloth of cashmere w