to it.

"I know a good place," he said, "where you can see right down to the
bottom."

Taking the oars he slowly paddled a little way out to a deep clear pool
of the sea.

"I'll go in here, Signorina."

He stood up straight, with his feet planted on each side of the boat's
prow, and glanced at the water intimately, as might a fish. Then he
shot one more glance at Vere and at the cigarettes, made the sign of the
cross, lifted his brown arms above his head, uttered a cry, and dived
cleanly below the water, going down obliquely till he was quite dim in
the water.

Vere watched him with deep attention. This feat of the boy fascinated
her. The water between them made him look remote, delicate and
unearthly--neither boy nor fish. His head, she could see, was almost
touching the bottom. She fancied that he was actually touching bottom
with his hands. Yes, he was. Bending low over the water she saw his
brown fingers, stretched out and well divided, promenading over the
basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab
tip-toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little
more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus
thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet foremost.
Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line with his feet,
he swam slowly under water, curving first in this direction then in
that, with a lithe ease that was enchantingly graceful. Finally, he
turned over on his back and sank slowly down until he looked like a
corpse lying at the bottom of the sea.

Then Vere felt a sickness of fear steal over her, and leaning over the
sea till her face almost touched the water, she cried out fiercely:

"Come up! Come up! Presto! Presto!"

As the boy had seemed to obey her when she cried out to him from the
summit of the cliff, so he seemed to obey her now.

When her voice died down into the sea-depths he rose from those depths,
and she saw his eyes laughing, his lips laughing at her, freed from the
strange veil of the water, which had cast upon him a spectral aspect,
the likeness of a thing deserted by its soul.

"Did you hear me that time?" Vere said, rather eagerly.

The boy lifted his dark head from the water to shake it, drew a long
breath, trod water, then threw up his chin with the touch of tongue
against teeth which is the Neapolitan negative.

"You didn't! Then why did you come up?"

He swam to the boat.

"It plea