Scattered far and wide over the fishing-grounds lay the coral fleet. There, a solitary, went Christian to a far station. Yet not as an outcast. He had tried his strength against his world, and the victory inclined to him. For a week he had been baited hard and cut off, as Giles had forewarned; and through it all he had kept his own counsel, and his temper, and his place with the fleet, defiant, confident, independent. And luck attended his nets. Therefore another week saw unsubstantial suspicion waning; scoffs had their day and died of inanition; and the boy's high-hearted flouting of a hard imposition annulled its rigour. Not a few now would be fain to take their chance with him. For Giles's consolation he had not rejected all advances, yet as often as not he still went alone, declining another hand. Thrift and honest glorying in his strength so inclined him, though a perverse parade may not be disclaimed. Yet none of these accounted for a distinct gladness for solitude that grew unawares.

What colour were her eyes? The moonlight had withheld certainty, and he had not given his mind to it then. Dark, he knew, to match her hair: rare eyes, like pansies dewy in shade?

Down swung with their swags of netting the leaded cross-beams from his hands into the shadowed water, and its dark, lucid green was faced with eddies. Down, deeper than the fathoming of his eyes, plunged his spirit, and walked the sea's mysteries in vain imaginings. Mechanically he set the boat crawling while he handled the guys. A trail of weed swam dim below; it entangled. His wits said weed, nothing but weed, but his pulse leapt. Day after day, not to be schooled, it had quickened so to half-expectancy of a glimpse at some unguessed secret of the deeps. He was glad to be alone.

Body and mind he bent to the draught, till the cross-beams rose, came out dripping up to the gunwale, and neatly to rest. A ruddy tangle hung among the meshes. He paused before out-sorting to resolve an importunate doubt: was this more than mere luck to his nets? It was not the first time he had had occasion to debate an unanswerable question. The blank westward seas, near or far, returned no intelligence to his eager survey, nothing to signify he was not quit of obligation.

A witch she was, of an evil breed, one to be avoided, pitied, and abhorred. No conscious impulse moved Christian to seek her again, though her beauty was a wonder not to be forgotten, and she had dealt with him so kindly. Yet of the contrary elements of that strange encounter the foul stood unchanged, but the fair had suffered blight, because from the small return demanded of him his mother's heart had taken hurt. A full confession would indeed but change the current of distrust. He sighed, yet smiled a little; he would have to own that a wish persisted to know the colour of those eyes.

From the sweat and ache of toil he paused a moment to see where he lay. Under a faint breath from the south he had been drifting; the fleet also had drifted to leeward.

Within a grand enclosure, satisfying coolness and peace, and splendid shade reigned, for no man's solace and reward.

The sun rode high, and the west breathed in turn, bringing a film of haze. A delicate blue veil, that no eye could distinguish from the melting blue of sea and heaven, an evanescent illusion of distance, hung, displacing the real.

Above the boy's head a seagull dipped and sailed. It swooped low with a wild note, 'Diadyomene, Diadyomene,' and flew west.

Christian upturned a startled face. The drifting fleet had vanished; he was alone with the gracious elements.

Too loyal of heart to dream of excuse, he rendered instant obedience to the unwelcome summons, headed round, hoisted every stitch, and slanted away after the white wings. Yet he chafed, angry and indignant against so unwarrantable an imposition on his good faith. Go he must, but for a fair understanding, but to end an intolerable assumption that to a witch creature he owed payment indefinitely deferred at her pleasure.

He owed her his life; no less than that she might exact.

He found he was smiling despite a loath mind and anxious. Now he would see of what colour were her eyes.

The young witch Diadyomene leaned forward from a rock, and smiled at the white body's beauty lying in the pool below. She was happy, quivering to the finger-tips with live malice; and the image at her feet, of all things under heaven, gave her dearest encouragement. Her boulder shelved into a hollow good for enthronement, draped and cushioned with a shag of weed. There she leant sunning in the ardent rays; there she drew coolness about her, with the yet wet dark ribbons of seaweed from throat to ankle tempering her flesh anew. No man could have spied her then.

By a flight of startled sea-birds, he nears. She casts off that drapery. Through the gorge comes Christian, dripping, and stands at gaze.

With half-shut eyes, with mirth at heart, she lay motionless for him to discern and approach. She noted afresh, well pleased, his stature and comely proportions; and as he neared, his ruddy tan, his singular fair hair and eyes, she marked with no distaste. The finer the make of this creature, the finer her triumph in its ruin.

He came straight opposite, till only the breadth of water at her feet was between.

'Why has "Diadyomene, Diadyomene" summoned me?' he said.

Against the dark setting of olive weed her moist skin glistened marvellously white in the sun. A gaze grave and direct meeting his could not reconcile him to the sight of such beauty bare and unshrinking. He dropped self-conscious eyes; they fell upon the same nude limbs mirrored in the water below. There he saw her lips making answer.

'I sent you no summons.'

Christian looked up astonished, and an 'Oh' of unmistakable satisfaction escaped him that surprised and stung the young witch. He stood at fault and stammered, discountenanced, an intruder requiring excuse.

'A seagull cried your name, and winged me through the reefs to shore, and led me here.'

'I sent you no summons,' she repeated.

A black surmise flashed that the white bird was her familiar, doing her bidding once, this time compassing independent mischief. Then his face burned as the sense of the reiteration reached his wits: she meant to tell him that he lied. Confounded, he knew not how to justify himself to her. There, below his downcast eyes, her reflected face waited, quite emotionless. Suddenly her eyes met his: she had looked by way of his reflection to encounter them. Down to the mirror she dipped one foot, and sent ripples to blot out her image from his inspection. It was a mordant touch of rebuke.

'Because I pardoned one trespass, you presume on another.'

'I presume nothing. I came, unhappily, only as I believed at your expressed desire.'

'How? I desire you?' She added: 'You would say now you were loath to come.'

'I was,' he admitted, ashamed for his lack of gratitude.

'Go—go!' she said, with a show of proud indifference, 'and see if the gull that guided you here without my consent will guide you hence without my consent.'

Insult and threat he recognised, and answered to the former first.

'Whatever you lay to my charge, I may hardly say a word in defence without earning further disgrace for bare truth.'

'You did not of yourself return here? For far from you was any desire ever to set eyes on me again?'

So well did she mask her mortal resentment, that the faint vibration in her voice conveyed to him suspicion of laughter.

'On you—I think I had none—but for one thing,' he said, with honest exactitude.

'And that?'

Reluctantly he gave the truth in naked simplicity.

'I did desire to see the colour of your eyes.'

She hid them, and broke into charming, genuine laughter.

'Do you know yet?' she said.

'No, for they are set overdeep for a woman, and the lashes shadow so.'

'Come nearer, then, and look.'

He stepped straight into the pool knee-deep and deeper, and with three strides stood below. She bent her head towards him with her arms upon her knee, propping it that a hand might cover irrepressible smiles. Her beautiful eyes she opened wide for the frank grey eyes to consider. Many a breath rose and fell, and neither offered to relinquish the intimate close.

Beautiful eyes indeed! with that dark, indescribable vert iris that has the transparent depth of shadowed sea-water. They were bright with happy mirth; they were sweetly serious; they were intent on a deep inquiry into his; they were brimming wells not to be fathomed; oh, what more? what haunted their vague, sad, gracious mystery?

'Are you satisfied yet of their colour?' she asked quietly, bringing him to a sense of the licence he indulged.

'Of their colour—yes.'

'How, then, are you not satisfied?'

'I do not know.'

'Bare truth!'

'What thoughts, then, lay behind while you looked down so?'

She kept her mouth concealed, and after a pause said low as a whisper: 'Looking at your eyes, I wondered if they would alter greatly when your time came—to die.'

'Ah, no, no,' he said, startled; 'how could you!' His mind only caught the suggestion to reflect upon her transparent eyes stricken with the tragedy of death. From so gentle a tone he could not gather a sinister hint; moreover, she smiled to effect a blind.

'Now that your quest is over, I in turn desire certain knowledge. Gratify me, and so shall your rash footing here to-day stand redeemed.'

She signed for him to follow, and led the way by rock and pool to the entrance of the cave. There upon a boulder she leaned, and pointed him up to the rock above, where the rough inscription he had set there remained unimpaired.

'That is your handiwork?'

'Yes.'

'What does it mean?'

His heart thumped. To her he had addressed that legend, not knowing what she was.

'I do not know that you are fit to hear.'

Her just indignation refrained from him, and his heart smote him.

'Ah! I should not judge. Hear then!' and he read.

For an instant her face fell, troubled, and she moved restlessly.

'And who are They? Who is the Father?'

'God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.'

'He did not make me.'

'But He did.'

'Say that He made you if so you please: I speak for myself. Pass on now. Who is the Son?'

'Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord, who suffered and died to save us from our sins.'

'Suffered and died!' she exclaimed, and then added, 'I have no sins.'

'Ah, you have!' said Christian, aghast.

'You may have, may be, but not I. Pass on. Who is the other one?'

'The Holy Ghost the Comforter.'

'Whose comforter? Theirs? yours? not mine—I need no comfort.'

When he said, 'O poor, lost soul, God have mercy!' she rose to passion.

'You shall not say so; I will not endure it. And why should you look at me so? and why should you speak it low? Am I to be pitied—and pitied of you, who but for my pity would by now be a shredded and decayed patch sunk deep?'

'My body.'

Diadyomene recovered herself instantly, recalled to the larger conquest she designed.

'Yet pass on again: there is more—"At your service!" Whose?'

'Yours.'

'Mine! That is not possible,' she said coldly; 'nor of the whole can I make sense.'

'It means that I offered to serve her whose footprints I had seen—yours,—and pledged myself by the sacred names that she should have no fears.'

'Fears!'

Christian flushed painfully. It was not possible to intimate to her how he had considered that a woman unclothed would surely shrink from a man's presence.

'You make for a simple end by strange means!'

'How is it,' she resumed, 'that since quite freely you pledged yourself so sacredly to my service, you came most unwillingly when you thought I had need of you?'

Before her penetrating gaze shame entered.

'For your need I would have come gladly; yes—I think so—in spite of incurring worse; but for your pleasure——'

'Not, for instance, had I wished to see the colour of your eyes?'

It was but poor sport to put him out of countenance. Quite kindly she asked, 'What now have you incurred that worse should be to dread?'

He began of the name 'Sinister,' and of all it implied. She laughed, asking him why he should expound that. He went on to the definite ills that had beset him, because the injury to his boat betrayed him to inquisition.

'But how?' she asked; 'you admitted nothing, else you failed in your promise to me.'

'No, but challenged, I could not deny I had dared here.'

'Why not?'

'It would not have been true,' he said, puzzled.

Diadyomene opened her eyes wide and laughed.

'And do you use your powers of speech only to say what is true?'

'Yes,' he said, indignant. 'How else?'

'Now I,' she said, 'use speech to disguise truth, with foul or with fair, or sometimes to slay and bury it out of sight.'

'Then, when you declared you had not summoned me, was that untrue?'

'If I now answered "Yes" or "No," you could be no nearer satisfaction; for you have not the wit to weigh my word with mood, disposition, circumstance, to strike a balance for truth.'

Christian pondered, perplexed and amazed at that perverse argument.

'I would another were here to unreeve this tangle you are in. There is one, wise, tender, a saint.'

Diadyomene levelled her brows.

'A woman! And you love her!' she said, and astonished the inexperienced boy.

'Above all! She is mother to me.'

He said timidly: 'Of all evils incurred by my presumption here, the worst is that between her and me your secret stands a bar to perfect confidence. I did not guess it would gall her so. I may not tell you how.'

'Yes, tell me.'

'I cannot.'

'A secret.'

'Not strictly; some day I might, but not now.'

She shot a keen glance, suspicious by that heedless reservation that, after all, he was shrewdly playing his own game. He went on.

'With her your secret would be absolutely safe; and if her you would but include——'

'But I will not,' she said peremptorily, 'nor shall you take counsel with her, nor come back well charged for convincing me of what you may be pleased to call sin; for presently we part for ever—for ever, alive or dead.'

That struck silence for a minute. Then Christian straightened and said:

'I have then much to say first. I have a message to you.'

'To me—a message!'

'The message of the Gospel. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'

'Ah yes,' she said; 'we were to return to that. "Suffered and died," you said of one—the Son.'

The young gospeller took up his task void of all vain conceit; but humility, simplicity, and honesty alone could not prevail over the quick-witted witch when she was bent on entangling him. A long hour he laboured with the story of the Redemption, she questioning to his bewilderment, involving him in contradiction, worsting him again and again, though he would not know it; till, weary of harassing, she heard him in silence, with an unmoved attention that was worse discouragement.

His own incompetence he had known, but he had not thought himself so unstable that the pressure of patient eyes could weigh down his clear sense; that the lifting of night-black hair in the light wind, the curve of a neck, the slow play of idle hands, could distract him. He knew he had failed utterly, that he did not deserve to succeed before ever her comment began.

'O the folly of it!' she said with wonder and scorn. 'Truly I am well quit of a soul if it bring intelligent creatures of flesh and blood to worship, as highest excellence conceivable, a joyless life, a degraded death. For others? The more foolish. And you would have me repent and be converted to that? I—I repent, who have gained this?'

She rose to her feet, flung up head and arms; her bosom heaved with a breath of ecstasy, her lips parted, her eyes shone; the glory, power, magic, of the deep flashed into visible embodiment in her. The perfect woman, possessed by the spirit of the sea, unawares took worship of the boy's heart. To seal her supremacy, a wave leaping in the gorge broke to him the unnoted advance of the tide. He thrilled as though the sea had actually responded to her passion.

To a new, wonderful note of power and sweetness she began, with a face and gesture that alone were eloquent:

'O poor mortal! the deeps to you are abysses of death, while the storm-winds, ravening, hunt you. Oh, 'tis pitiful! Deep, deep in the heart of the sea dwells eternal peace, and fear is dead to all who dwell there. Starry sea-blossoms grow stilly, by the winnowing of broad fins stirred only. When stormy terrors fall with black night on you above, with me below is a brooding blank of light and sound, and a darkness that can be felt lulls every sense. From that deep calm I float, I rise, to feel the upper pulses of the sea; to meet strong currents that in the very hair wake vigour; to leave silence far underfoot; to taste of the glorious battle of wind and wave. Strong, foam-headed bearers take me, whirl me as I will. There is madness, rout, and drunken frenzy of the elements for honour of my presence. O the roar! O the rains! O the lightning!

'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea the broad glare of this full sunlight is softened into a mystery of amber twilight, clear and cool; and quivering cloud-shadows dim it to pearl, and sunset throbs into it a flush. There the light of the white moon is a just perceptible presence of grey silver to tell me a night is cloudless. She draws me—she draws me—to her I yearn. My heart, my love, my life, rise large and buoyant in worship of her. To her fair face you have never looked up as I, at poise, with earth far below and the air fathoms above. Ah, so large and near and gracious she lies! In the faint swell of a calm she shrinks and expands, as though she breathed with me—with the sea; a ripple of wind will comb her into quivering lines of silver; and the heave of a wave shatter her to fragments that vainly slide and dance to close back into the perfect disk. Involuntarily your hands would snatch at the near splinters of living silver. I rise through them to rarer air, and lo! my moon has fled up immeasurably, and shines remote, concentrated, placid.

'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea, within unhewn walls, are splendid courts, where marbles discover their shy translucence, and drink mellow life from widespread floors of sand, golden, perfect, unwrinkled and unstained from age to age; and drink milky fire that hangs where nebulous sea-stars cluster that night may never prevail. Inmost wait vacant shrines to gratify worship of sleep and dreams—pure amber one, great crystals one, and rainbow spars. One there is of moony mother-of-pearl, meetest covert of rest, when life grows a little weary of conquest and play, and greatly enamoured of dreams. Ah, dreams! You with a soul—can you dream? Nay—but I will not know.

'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea hide brine-bred monsters; living there, dying there; never touching the thin, vacant air, never facing the broad eye of heaven. Quick death by the grip of huge jaws meets the drowning there. Your might—yours—is puny: you never could cope with the fierce sea-wolves. And your limbs are heavy and slow: you could not play with the dolphin and mock at the shark. To me come all by love or fear. The frailest shape afloat, that fears a shadow, into my palms drops from the waves; and uncouth herds leave browsing to hustle their finned heads under my hands. And the terrible breeds, the restive, I catch by the mane and school, against their resistance driving sharp ivory hard between the joints of their mail. How they wrestle and course, as pride of their strength is mine, and joy of their speed is mine—ah! most supremely when they most dispute it. Your eyes declare wonder, since your broad limbs could match the banded strength of a score of my slight mould. I grant it here, where the touch of the earth and the touch of the air are dull, faint, weak, to flesh and blood nourished of the deeps; but life and vigour and strength transcendent evolve from the embrace of the salt, cold sea, from deep indraughts of keen brine.

'Down in the deepest lies sleeping the oldest of living creatures, placid in a valley of the sea. His vast green coil spreads out for leagues; where his great heart beats slow the waters boil; he lifts an eyelid, and the waves far, far above are lit with phosphor light. Runs a tremor because of his dreams, I sink to the weedy ears and chant peace, unaffrighted, sure that no fret can withstand my song. Shall he once roar and lash with all his spines, your coasts will crumble and be not.

'What, you—you with a soul, get quickened breath and eager eyes from a few empty words, as though even in you woke the sting of a splendid desire for entering the reserves of the sea, with intimacy and dominion like mine. No—no—stand off! content you with the earth and air. Never—never shall you lay your hand upon my breast, nor set your lips to mine, nor gain the essential word, for you count your soul as priceless, and never will let it go.'

She ceased. Christian suddenly crossed himself, turned his back, and went from her and her magic. The forward tide checked his feet; its crisp murmur and great undertones uttered a voluble, soft chorus on that strange monologue. He came to himself to know that he offered outrageous offence to virgin pride, unwarrantable, and far from his mind. Her free, bold words were too coldly proud for any thought of disrespect. He turned again hastily. She was gone.

He sprang to the brimming cave. 'Diadyomene,' he called; 'Diadyomene,' and followed up the moving water; but he had no definite sight of her, and got no answer till he came to the great cavern. No witch she looked beside the jasper mirror, but just a slender, solitary maiden. She did not lift her pensive head, nor move nor look at him as he drew to her.

'Diadyomene,' he supplicated, 'have out on me all that is in your mind. Call me dumb-squint, beetle-head in mind and manners.'

With a quite impassive countenance she answered gently:

'It is in my mind that the sun is low and the tide high. It is in my mind to put you in a way where both may yet serve for your safe homing.'

Out came a sovereign smile of humour, sweet raillery, and condonation blended, instant on her investigation of his eyes. Humbled and exalted at one fine touch, Christian's judgment surrendered to her. She hindered a word of it.

'I can show you an outlet that will take you to a sheltered reach behind the landward walls of this Isle. So will you evade the worst races of the tide. Furthermore, from the mainland to the open you will need aid.'

He answered unsuspiciously that of her grace he had learned the reefs fairly.

'Ah yes, and conned through but once,' she said smoothly, and eyed him.

'Conned twice—once either way.'

'I sent you no summons,' she expostulated quietly.

'Do you think that I have lied to you?'

She did not answer.

With indignant emphasis he repeated, 'Do you think I have lied?'

'Do you think I have?'

Not a quiver crossed her front with the mendacious alternative; not even for laughter, when the face of Christian lent ample occasion; for, as a fish with a barb in the gullet not to be spewed out, was he impotent and spun.

While still he gasped, Diadyomene slid forward into the deep and bade haste for daylight. Fine swimmer he was, but his strokes compared ill with an effortless ease like a wing-wide bird's. Refraction gave her limbs a lovely distortion, and pearly soft they were through the beryl wash. Behind her merged head the level just rocked and quivered; cleft by his chin it rebelled in broad ripples. She turned her head, curious of his clumsy method; she could not forbear a smile; she reverted hastily beyond the blind of her floating hair.

But he could not follow where she offered to lead, for she dropped her feet, and sank, and walked the under-floor of rock, entering a deep gallery. He dived, entered after, then breath gave out, and he shot back to gasp.

She presented a face of grieved surprise. 'There is another way to the same end,' was all she said on his deficiency.

He mounted after her then, by shelf and ridge, an intricate, retiring way, till she showed him a dark gulf at their feet.

'Leap!' she said, 'no hurt lies there.'

Utter blackness lay below, repugnant to his nerves; yet not therefore he stayed.

'Diadyomene,' he said, with desperate temerity, 'you do not forbid me ever to see you again.'

Daylight struggled feebly in there. Her answer was not direct, and it laboured.

'I have no—desire—ever to see you again.'

Quick for once: 'Have you a desire never to see me again?' he said, and held his breath.

He saw her step to the verge, lift her arms, and poise. She delivered an ingenious masterstroke to wound.

'Be under no such apprehension. I will convince you: for your assurance I will go first.'

'Hold back!' with a savage sob cried Christian; leapt, and dropped with straightened feet perpendicular in the gulf.

With a thin sigh and a vigorous kiss two elements received his descent. Diadyomene leaned over the dark, and called 'Farewell.' The word was echoed back by him hoarsely; and again from further distance it came, ringing sound.

Beneath her breath she said, 'Some day I will have grey eyes weeping before my face.' Then laughter possessed her, and away she sprang, to revel in the release of peals of wicked delight.

Very cold-hearted the sea-bred are, and their malice is very keen.