“But,” said her companion,
“how are you able to speak a language you never learned from your loxias
and peacocks?”--“I will tell you,” said Immalee, with an air of
solemnity, which her beauty and innocence made at once ludicrous and
imposing, and in which she betrayed a slight tendency to that wish to
mystify that distinguishes her delightful sex,--“there came a spirit to
me from the world of voices, and it whispered to me sounds that I never
have forgotten, long, long before I was born.”--“Really?” said the
stranger. “Oh yes!--long before I could gather a fig, or gather the
water in my hand, and that must be before I was born. When I _was_ born,
I was not so high as the rose-bud, at which I tried to catch, now I am
as near the moon as the palm-tree--sometimes I catch her beams sooner
than he does, therefore I must be very old, and very high.” At these
words, the stranger, with an expression indescribable, leaned against a
tree. He viewed that lovely and helpless being, while he refused the
fruits and water she offered him, with a look, that, for the first time,
intimated compassion. The stranger feeling did not dwell long in a
mansion it was unused to. The expression was soon exchanged for that
half-ironical, half-diabolical glance Immalee could not understand. “And
you live here alone,” he said, “and you have lived in this beautiful
place without a companion?”--“Oh no!” said Immalee, “I have a companion
more beautiful than all the flowers in the isle. There is not a
rose-leaf that drops in the river so bright as its cheek. My friend
lives under the water, but its colours are so bright. It kisses me too,
but its lips are very cold; and when I kiss it, it seems to dance, and
its beauty is all broken into a thousand faces, that come smiling at me
like little stars. But, though my friend has a thousand faces, and I
have but one, still there is one thing that troubles me. There is but
one stream where it meets me, and that is where are no shadows from the
trees--and I never can catch it but when the sun is bright. Then when I
catch it in the stream, I kiss it on my knees; but my friend has grown
so tall, that sometimes I wish it were smaller. Its lips spread so much
wider, that I give it a thousand kisses for one that I get.” “Is your
friend male or female,” said the stranger.--“What is that?” answered
Immalee.--“I mean, of what sex is your friend?”

“But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and it was
not till his return the next day, when he revisited the isle, that he
discovered Immalee’s friend was what he suspected. He found this
innocent and lovely being bending over a stream that reflected her
image, and wooing it with a thousand wild and graceful attitudes of
joyful fondness. The stranger gazed at her for some time, and thoughts
it would be difficult for man to penetrate into, threw their varying
expression over his features for a moment. It was the first of his
intended victims he had ever beheld with compunction. The joy, too, with
which Immalee received him, almost brought back human feelings to a
heart that had long renounced them; and, for a moment, he experienced a
sensation like that of his master when he visited paradise,--pity for
the flowers he resolved to wither for ever. He looked at her as she
fluttered round him with outspread arms and dancing eyes; and sighed,
while she welcomed him in tones of such wild sweetness, as suited a
being who had hitherto conversed with nothing but the melody of birds
and the murmur of waters. With all her ignorance, however, she could not
help testifying her amazement at his arriving at the isle without any
visible means of conveyance. He evaded answering her on this point, but
said, “Immalee, I come from a world wholly unlike that you inhabit, amid
inanimate flowers, and unthinking birds. I come from a world where all,
as I do, think and speak.” Immalee was speechless with wonder and
delight for some time; at length she exclaimed, “Oh, how they must love
each other! even I love my poor birds and flowers, and the trees that
shade, and the waters that sing to me!” The stranger smiled. “In all
that world, perhaps there is not another being beautiful and innocent as
you. It is a world of suffering, guilt, and care.” It was with much
difficulty she was made to comprehend the meaning of these words, but
when she did, she exclaimed, “Oh, that I could live in that world, for I
would make every one happy!”--“But you could not, Immalee,” said the
stranger; “this world is of such extent that it would take your whole
life to traverse it, and, during your progress, you never could be
conversant with more than a small number of sufferers at a time, and the
evils they undergo are in many instances such as you or no human power
could relieve.” At these words, Immalee burst into an agony of tears. “Weak, but lovely being,” said the stranger, “could your tears heal the
corrosions of disease?--cool the burning throb of a cancered
heart?--wash the pale slime from the clinging lips of famine?--or, more
than all, quench the fire of forbidden passion?” Immalee paused aghast
at this enumeration, and could only faulter out, that wherever she went,
she would bring her flowers and sunshine among the healthy, and they
should all sit under the shade of her own tamarind. That for disease and
death, she had long been accustomed to see flowers wither and die their
beautiful death of nature. “And perhaps,” she added, after a reflective
pause, “as I have often known them to retain their delicious odour even
after they were faded, perhaps _what thinks_ may live too after the form
has faded, and that is a thought of joy.” Of passion, she said she knew
nothing, and could propose no remedy for an evil she was unconscious of. She had seen flowers fade with the season, but could not imagine why the
flower should destroy itself. “But did you never trace a worm in the
flower?” said the stranger, with the sophistry of corruption. “Yes,”
answered Immalee, “but the worm was not the native of the flower; its
own leaves never could have hurt it.” This led to a discussion, which
Immalee’s impregnable innocence, though combined with ardent curiosity
and quick apprehension, rendered perfectly harmless to her. Her playful
and desultory answers,--her restless eccentricity of imagination,--her
keen and piercing, though ill-poised intellectual weapons,--and, above
all, her instinctive and unfailing _tact_ in matters of right and wrong,
formed altogether an array that discomfited and baffled the tempter more
than if he had been compelled to encounter half the _wranglers_ of the
European academies of that day.