e his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them, fiery
envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting at buttons.
A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and her head rose to see
her world. She sank down the valley, where another wave was mounding for
its onward roll: a gentle scene of Weyburn's favourite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him--it was she. How could it ever have been any
other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave him the ropes,
pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood free of boots and socks,
and singing out, truly enough, the words of a popular cry, 'White ducks
want washing,' went over and in.

CHAPTER XXVII

A MARINE DUET

She soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the dive from the boat,
and received all illumination. With a chuckle of delighted surprise, like
a blackbird startled, she pushed seaward for joy of the effort, thinking
she could exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture,
yielding then only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.

The swim was a holiday; all was new--nothing came to her as the same old
thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-mind--had left her
earth-mind ashore. The swim, and Matey Weyburn pursuing her passed up,
out of happiness, through the spheres of delirium, into the region where
our life is as we would have it be a home holding the quiet of the
heavens, if but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.

He drew on her, but he was distant, and she waved an arm. The shout of
her glee sprang from her: 'Matey!' He waved; she heard his voice. Was it
her name? He was not so drunken of the sea as she: he had not leapt out
of bondage into buoyant waters, into a youth without a blot, without an
aim, satisfied in tasting; the dream of the long felicity.

A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent? It relaxed her stroke of
arms and legs. He had doubled the salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled
its gift of freedom. She turned to float, gathering her knees for the
funny sullen kick, until she heard him near. At once her stroke was
renewed vigorously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called,
'Adieu, Matey Weyburn!'

Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able to bring down
on her: she swam bravely, and she was divine to see ahead as well as
overtake.

Darting to the close parallel, he said: 'What sea nym