took no notice. She seemed
unaware, she seemed to be pressing in her beaked mouth till she
had the heart of him. Then, at last, she drew away and looked at
him--looked at him. He knew what she wanted. He took her by
the hand and led her across the foreshore, back to the
sandhills. She went silently. He felt as if the ordeal of proof
was upon him, for life or death. He led her to a dark
hollow.

"No, here," she said, going out to the slope full under the
moonshine. She lay motionless, with wide-open eyes looking at
the moon. He came direct to her, without preliminaries. She held
him pinned down at the chest, awful. The fight, the struggle for
consummation was terrible. It lasted till it was agony to his
soul, till he succumbed, till he gave way as if dead, lay with
his face buried, partly in her hair, partly in the sand,
motionless, as if he would be motionless now for ever, hidden
away in the dark, buried, only buried, he only wanted to be
buried in the goodly darkness, only that, and no more.

He seemed to swoon. It was a long time before he came to
himself. He was aware of an unusual motion of her breast. He
looked up. Her face lay like an image in the moonlight, the eyes
wide open, rigid. But out of the eyes, slowly, there rolled a
tear, that glittered in the moonlight as it ran down her
cheek.

He felt as if as the knife were being pushed into his already
dead body. With head strained back, he watched, drawn tense, for
some minutes, watched the unaltering, rigid face like metal in
the moonlight, the fixed, unseeing eye, in which slowly the
water gathered, shook with glittering moonlight, then
surcharged, brimmed over and ran trickling, a tear with its
burden of moonlight, into the darkness, to fall in the sand.

He drew gradually away as if afraid, drew away--she did
not move. He glanced at her--she lay the same. Could he
break away? He turned, saw the open foreshore, clear in front of
him, and he plunged away, on and on, ever farther from the
horrible figure that lay stretched in the moonlight on the sands
with the tears gathering and travelling on the motionless,
eternal face.

He felt, if ever he must see her again, his bones must be
broken, his body crushed, obliterated for ever. And as yet, he
had the love of his own living body. He wandered on a long, long
way, till his brain drew dark and he was unconscious with
weariness. Then he curled in the deepest darkness he could find,
under the sea-grass, a