How could I address in the language of passion which alone would have expressed my true feelings, a dancing fairy such as this?

‘Bravo!’ I said, as she stopped, panting and breathless.  ’Why, Winifred, you dance better than ever!’

She leaped away in alarm and confusion; while Snap, on the contrary, welcomed me with much joy.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said, not looking at me with the blunt frankness of childhood, as the little woman of the old days used to do, but drooping her eyes.  ‘I didn’t see you.’

’But I saw you, Winifred; I have been watching you for the last quarter of an hour.’

‘Oh, you never have!’ said she, in distress; ’what could you have thought?  I was only trying to cheer up poor Snap, who is out of sorts.  What a mad romp you must have thought me, sir!’

‘Why, what’s the matter with Snap?’

‘I don’t know.  Poor Snap’ (stooping down to fondle him, and at the same time to hide her face from me, for she was talking against time to conceal her great confusion and agitation at seeing me. That was perceptible enough.)

Then she remembered she was hatless.

‘Oh dear, where’s my hat?’ said she, looking round.  I had picked up the hat before accosting her, and it was now dangling behind me.  I, too, began talking against time, for the beating of my heart began again at the thought of what I was going to say and do.  ‘Hat!’ I said; ’do you wear hats, Winifred?  I should as soon have thought of hearing the Queen of the Tylwyth Teg ask for her hat as you, after such goings-on as those I have just been witnessing.  You see I have not forgotten the Welsh you taught me.’

‘Oh, but my hat—­where is it?’ cried she, vexed and sorely ashamed.  So different from the unblenching child who loved to stand hatless and feel the rain-drops on her bare head!

‘Well, Winifred, I’ve found a hat on the sand,’ I said; ‘here it is.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said she, and stretched out her hand for it.

‘No,’ said I, ’I don’t for one moment believe in its belonging to you, any more than it belongs to the Queen of the “Fair People.”  But if you’ll let me put it on your head I’ll give you the hat I’ve found,’ and with a rapid movement I advanced and put it on her head.  I had meant to seize that moment for saying what I had to say, but was obliged to wait.

An expression of such genuine distress overspread her face, that I regretted having taken the liberty with her.  Her bearing altogether was puzzling me.  She seemed instinctively to feel as I felt, that raillery was the only possible attitude to take up in a situation so extremely romantic—­a meeting on the sands at night between me and her who was neither child nor woman—­and yet she seemed distressed at the raillery.

Embarrassment was rapidly coming between us.

There was a brief silence, during which Winifred seemed trying to move away from me.