"Gnulemah!" she answered, laying a finger on the head of her golden serpent, and uttering the name as though it were of the only woman in the world.
But the next moment she found time to realize that something unprecedented had occurred, and her wonder trembled on the brink of dismay.
"Speaks in my language!" she exclaimed below her breath; "but is not Hiero."
Until Balder's arrival, then, Hiero would seem to have been the only talking animal she had known. The singularity of this did not at first strike the young man. Gnulemah was the arch-wonder; yet she so fully justified herself as to seem very nature; and by dint of her magic reality, what else had been wonderful seemed natural. Balder was in fairy-land.
He fell easily into the fairy-land humor.
"I am a being like yourself," said he, with a smile; "and not dumb like your plants and animals."
"Understood!--answered!" exclaimed Gnulemah again, in a tremor. As morning spreads up the sky, did the sweet blood flow outward to warm her face and neck. As the blush deepened, her eyelids fell, and she shielded her beautiful embarrassment with her raised hands. A pathos in the simple grace of this action drew tears unawares to Balder's eyes.
What was in her mind? what might she be? Had she lived always in this enchanted spot, companionless (for poor old Hiero could scarcely serve her turn) and ignorant perhaps that the world held other beings endowed like herself with human gifts? Had she vainly sought throughout nature for some kinship more intimate than nature could yield her, and thus at length fancied herself a unique, independently created soul, imperial over all things? Since her whole world was comprised between the wall and the river, no doubt she believed the reality of things extended no further.
In Balder she had found a creature like, yet pleasingly unlike herself, palpable to feeling as to sight, and gifted with that articulate utterance which till now she had accounted her almost peculiar faculty. Delightful might be the discovery, but awesome too, frightening her back by its very tendency to draw her forward.
Whether or not this were the solution of Gnulemah's mystery, Balder recognized quiet to be his cue towards her. Probably he could not do better than to get the ear of Doctor Hiero, and establish himself upon a footing more conventional than the present one. His next step accordingly was to ask after him by name.
She peeped at the questioner between her fingers, but ventured not quite to emerge from behind them, as she answered,--her primary attempt at description,-"Hiero is--Hiero!"