you; teach him to speak your proper Christian name.
He hasn't heard it yet,--heard "Matey,"--never yet has been taught
"Matthew."'

'Aminta!'

'Oh, my friend! my dear!' she cried, in the voice of the wounded, like a
welling of her blood: 'my strength will leave me. I may play--not you:
you play with a weak vessel. Swim, and be quiet. How far do you count
it?'

'Under a quarter of a mile.'

'Don't imagine me tired.'

'If you are, hold on to me.'

'Matey, I'm for a dive.'

He went after the ball of silver and bubbles, and they came up together.
There is no history of events below the surface.

She shook off her briny blindness, and settled to the full sweep of the
arms, quite silent now. Some emotion, or exhaustion from the strain of
the swimmer's breath in speech, stopped her playfulness. The pleasure she
still knew was a recollection of the outward swim, when she had been
privileged to cast away sex with the push from earth, as few men will
believe that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and
ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant them their
one short holiday truce.

But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her when there was
yet a space of salt water between her and shore; and she smiled at times,
that he might not think she was looking grave.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PLIGHTING

They touched sand at the first draw of the ebb, and this being earth,
Matey addressed himself to the guardian and absolving genii of
matter-of-fact, by saying; 'Did you inquire about the tides?'

Her head shook, stunned with what had passed. She waded to shore, after
motioning for him to swim on. Men, in comparison beside their fair
fellows, are so little sensationally complex, that his one feeling now,
as to what had passed, was relief at the idea of his presence having been
a warrantable protectorship.

Aminta's return from the sea-nymph to the state of woman crossed
annihiliation on the way back to sentience, and picked up meaningless
pebbles and shells of life, between the sea's verge and her tent's
shelter; hardly her own life to her understanding yet, except for the
hammer Memory became, to strike her insensible, at here and there a
recollected word or nakedness of her soul.

He swam along by the shore to where the boat was paddled, spying at her
bare feet on the sand, her woman's form. He waved, and the figure in the
striped tunic and trousers waved her response, a