With its splendour and peace unalterable, the great sanctuary enclosed them.

Face to face they stood, shattered life and lost soul. Diadyomene tried to smile, but her lips trembled; she tried to greet him with the old name Diadyomenos, but it fell imperfect. And his grey eyes addressed her too forcibly to be named. What was in them and his face to make her afraid? eyes and face of a lover foredoing speech.

The eager, happy trouble of the boy she had beguiled flushed out no more; nay, but he paled; earnest, sad, indomitable, the man demanded of her answering integrity. Uncomprehended, the mystery of pain in embodied power stood confronting the magic of the sea, and she quailed.

'Agonistes, Agonistes!' she panted, 'now I find your name: it is Agonistes!'

But while he did not answer, her old light came to her for reading the tense inquiry of his eyes. Did they demand acknowledgment of her defeat and his supremacy? No, she would not own that; he should not know.

'And have you feared to keep what you got of the sea? And have you flung it away, as I counselled when last you beheld me?'

The strong, haggard face never altered for contest. He asked slowly:

'Was it a vision of Diadyomene that rose up to the waves through the shadow of a fisher's boat?'

With an effort she set her eyes at his defiantly.

'It was not I. I? For what cause?'

'He called you.'

'I come for no man's call.'

Against her will her eyes fell.

'Look at me, Diadyomene; for an evil dream haunts me, and your eyes have got it hid.'

'An evil dream!'

She laughed, but her breath came quick as again their looks encountered.

What she met in the steadfast grey eyes brought terror gathering to her own. She shuddered and covered her face.

'An evil dream haunts me, and your eyes have got it hid.'

He watched, dazed, and muttered: 'You—you.'

'What is it?—what is it?' she cried. 'Why have you brought it with you out of season? It is like an air that I cannot breathe. Take it away!'

Never before had she shown so human a weakness, nor had she ever shown so womanly fair. Her clear eyes dilated, her whole face quivered, and for an instant a shadow of vague wistfulness crossed her fear. Her lover's heart beat free of dreams, for a passion of tenderness responded to her need.

'Ah, Diadyomene, no! Can you so dream it, when, to keep all evil from you, I would, God willing, enter hell?'

'May be,' she whispered, 'it is what you call hell I enter, every year once, when my dream comes.'

Appalled he heard. 'You shall not, Diadyomene, you shall not! Come to me, call me, and what heart of man can brave, by my soul I will, and keep you safe.'

She found his eyes again, within them only love, and she rallied.

'It is only a dream,' she said. 'And yet to escape it I would give up many choice moments of glorious sea life.'

She eyed him hard, and clenched her hands. 'I would give up,' she said, 'the strongest desire my heart now holds; ay, in the dear moment of its fulfilment, I would give up even that, if so a certain night of the year might pass ever dreamless and untroubled.'

'So would not I! though I think my dream cannot be less terrible than yours; though I know my desire cannot be less dear. Diadyomene, what is the desire of your heart?'

She would not say; and she meant with her downcast, shy eyes to mislead him. But in vain: too humble was he to presume.

'Diadyomene, what is your dream?'

'I cannot tell,' she said, 'for it passes so that my brain holds but an echo of it, and my heart dread. And what remains of it cannot be told, for words are too poor and feeble to express it.'

He saw her thinking, sighing, and shuddering.

'How near is its coming?' he asked, and but half heeding she told, counting by the terms of the moon.

'Agonistes, how I know not, my deep, strong love of the sea grows somewhat faint when the hour draws near to dream; and the land, the poor, hard, unsatisfying land, grows some degrees dearer. Ah! but I loathe it after, when my life again beats strong and true with the pulse of the deep. Keep you far from me then, lest I hate you—yes, even you—hate you to death.'

'Rather bid me here, to watch out the night with you.'

'I forbid it!' she said, suddenly fierce and wary. 'Take heed! Wilful, deliberate trespass against my express will shall find no pity, no pardon.'

Quick she saw that, intemperate, she had startled her prey; therefore she amended, smiling sadly.

'See you how those diverse tides sway me even now. Agonistes, were you not of the land—did you share the sea—then may be—ah, ah——

'I will try to tell you. An awful sense of desolation falls, for I feel dry earth underfoot, and thin air, and I hear the sea moaning for me, but turn where I will I cannot see nor reach it: it lies beyond a lost path, and the glories, blisses, and strengths it gives me wither and die. And then horrors of the land close round me.

'What are they? I know not; they whirl past me so that their speed conceals them; yet, as streaks, are they hideous and ghastly. And I hear fearful sounds of speech, but not one distinct, articulate word. And in my dream I know that if any one stays, stands, confronts me, to be seen fully in the eyes and heard out clear from the din, all my joy of the sea would lie dead for ever, and the very way back would vanish.'

Christian had his own incomparable vision of the magic of the sea to oppose and ponder.

'Ah! you cannot comprehend, for I tell of it by way of the senses, and they are without, but this is within: in my veins, my breath, my fibres of life. It is I—me.'

'I can, ah! I can.'

'Yet the dear heart of the sea holds me fast through all; with imperious kindness it seizes my will when my love grows slackest, and draws me out of the shallows; and down, and down I drift, like weed.'

'Diadyomene, have you never defied your fear, and kept from sleep, and kept from the sea?'

Her voice sank. 'If I did—my dream might—come true.

'Agonistes, what I saw in your eyes was—I doubted—my dream—coming true.

'No; I will not look again.'

Christian's voice was as low and shaken as hers. 'What was there?' he said.

Again and again she gathered her breath for speech, yet at last was scarce audible.

'A horror—a living human body—tortured with fire and scourge—flayed.'

She lifted one glance and took the imprint of a strange tranced face, bloodless as death, void of speculation. Prone she sank to the edge of the altar rock, for such passions leapt up and grappled in desperate conflict as dissolved her strength under exquisite throes.

She never raised her head, till, after long wrestle, malice—strong, full-grown malice—recovered and stood up triumphant over all. And not one word all that while had come from her lover.

There lay he, his bright head low within reach of her hand. His tranquil ease, his quiet breath, flouted her before she saw that his eyes were closed in real sleep. His eyes were closed.

She sprang up, stung, willing to kill; her wicked heart laughed, gratified then with the doings of men.

How grand the creature lay!

She stood to feast her eyes on the doomed body. The placid composure of the sleeper, of serene countenance, of slack limbs, touched her as excellent comedy. But it exasperated her also to the verge of a shrieking finish.

She ached with a savage thirst in all her members; feet and hands and lips parched in imperious desires to trample, to smite, to bite her resentful hatred into the piece of flesh that mocked her control. The quiet sway of life within his ribs provoked her, with each slow breath he drew, to rend it from him.

She turned away hastily from temptation to so meagre a revenge; for his spirit must first be crushed and broken and rent, justly to compensate for insolent offence. 'He cannot escape, for his heart is in my hand already,' she said.

Ripples of jasper and beryl closed over her swift descent and shimmered to smooth. Lone in these splendid fittings for sepulture lay recumbent a make of earth meet to accomplish its void destiny.

Ripples of jasper and beryl broke from her slow ascent as a reflex current swept her back.

The mask of sleep lay over his face; though she peered intent, it would yield nothing, nothing. A want and a dread that struggled together for birth troubled the cold sea nature. Strong they thrust towards the light, as her mind recalled the intolerable speech of his eyes and his altered face. So near she bent that the warmth of his breath reached her lips. She shrank back, quivering, and crouched, rocked with passionate sighs.

'But I hate, I hate!' she moaned; for a contrary impulse bade her lay upon his breast her hand, and on his lips hers, and dare all her asking from his eyes. A disloyal hand went out and hovered over his heart. She plucked it back, aware of a desperate peril, vague, awful, alluring to destruction, like a precipice yawning under night.

His hair was yellow-brown, matching the mellow sands of the under-sea; it ran into crisp waves, and over the brow curved up to crest like a breaker that stayed unbroken. No such hair did the sea grow—no hair, no head, that often her hand had so wanted to handle; ay, graciously—at first—to hold the crispness, to break the crest; and ever because she dared not did fierceness for tearing arise. So slight an inclination, ungratified, extended to vast dimensions, and possessed her entire. And she called it hate. How long, how long, she complained, shall I bear with this thirst? Yet if long, as long shall the quenching be. He shall but abandon his soul, and no doubt shall restrain me from touching as I will.

She covered her face from the light of day, for she contemplated an amazement to nature: deadly hate enfolded in the arms of strong love.

When the tide brimmed up and kissed him awake, Diadyomene was away.

Another manner of Diadyomene vexed her lover's next coming: she was mockery incarnate, and unkind; for she would not condescend to his limitations, nor forsake a golden spongy nest two fathoms and more below breath. Yet her laughter and her eyes summoned him down, and he, poor fool, displayed before her derision his deficiency, slow to learn that untiring submission to humiliation would win no gracious reward at last. And the young witch was as slow to learn that no exasperation she could contrive would sting him into amorous close for mastery.

Christian was no tempered saint. Diadyomene gained a barren, bitter victory, for he fled.

At sundown a monitress, mounting the night tower, by a loophole of the stair looking down on the great rock saints, spied a figure kneeling devoutly. When the moon rose late the same kept vigil still. In the wan of dawn the same, overtaken by sleep, lay low against the feet of St. Margaret.

Though Christian slept, he heard the deep bell voices of the three. Articulate they grew, and entered the human soul with reproof and exhortation and promise. He woke, and intrepid rose to face the unruly clamours of nature, for the sake of the cast soul of that most beautiful body, Diadyomene.

Vain was the encounter and the passionate spiritual wooing. Diadyomene would not hear, at heart fiercely jealous because no such ardent entreaty had all her beauty and charms ever evoked. She was angered when he would not take dismissal.

'Never, never,' she said, 'has any creature of the sea thwarted me so and lived; and you, you dare! Hear now. There, and there, and there, stand yet your silly inscriptions. Cancel them, for earnest that never again shall mention of those monstrous impossible three trouble my ear.'

'No.'

'Hear yet. Cancel them, and here, perpetual and irrevocable, shall right of freedom be yours, and welcome. Leave them intact, and I swear you shall not get hence scatheless.'

'Can you mean this, Diadyomene?'

'Ah, so! because I relented once, you presume. See, and if those three can deliver you whole, them will I worship with you.'

And it came to pass that Christian carried home the best member that he possessed broken, for fulfilment of Diadyomene's promise.

He doubted she had divined a profane desire, and covertly rewarded it.