It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and the tangled
bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of shrubs, and rested,
chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket and looked at it, and
held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . .
I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed
imperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming.
§ 4
Two people were bathing in the sea.
I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and the
blue band of clear sky was no wider than before. These people must have
come into sight as I fell asleep, and awakened me almost at once. They
waded breast-deep in the water, emerging, coming shoreward, a woman,
with her hair coiled about her head, and in pursuit of her a man,
graceful figures of black and silver, with a bright green surge flowing
off from them, a pattering of flashing wavelets about them. He smote
the water and splashed it toward her, she retaliated, and then they
were knee-deep, and then for an instant their feet broke the long
silver margin of the sea.
Each wore a tightly fitting bathing dress that hid nothing of the
shining, dripping beauty of their youthful forms.
She glanced over her shoulder and found him nearer than she thought,
started, gesticulated, gave a little cry that pierced me to the heart,
and fled up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the wind, and
passed me, vanished amidst the black distorted bushes, and was gone—she
and her pursuer, in a moment, over the ridge of sand.