nd you: an old man treads the quay no more,
and a girl comes down to it grown pale and heavy-eyed, and a woman ageing
and greyer every time. Think and know! You never shall see them again;
for a brief moment you check and defy me, but the entrance of the tide
shall bring you your death.

'Now, I the while will plan the worst death I may. You think you have
faced that once already? Fool! from to-morrow's dawn till sunset I will
teach you better. The foulest creature of the deep shall take you again
and hold you helpless--but that is nothing: for swarms shall come up from
the sea, and from twilight to twilight they shall eat you alive. They
shall gnaw the flesh from your limbs; they shall pierce to the bone; they
shall drill you through and rummage your entrails. And with them shall
enter the brine to drench you with anguish. And I, beside you, with my
fingers in your hair, will watch all day, and have a care to lift your
head above the tide; and I will flick off the sea-lice and the crays from
your face and your eyes, to leave them whole and clear and legible to my
hate at the last. And at the very last I will lay my face down against
yours, and out of very pure hate will kiss you once--will kiss you more
than once, and will not tire because you will so quicken with loathing.
Even in the death agony I mean you to know my fingers in your hair. Ha!
Agonistes.

'And now you wish you had died on that moonlit, warm night long ago: and
me it gladdens to think I did not then cut you off from the life to
follow after, more bitter than many quick deaths. And you wish I had
finished you outright in the late storm, that so you might have died
blissfully ignorant of the whole truth: and I spared you only that you
should not escape a better torture that I had contrived.

'Ah! it has been a long delight to fool you, to play my game with
flawless skill. As I choose a wear of pearls, so chose I graces of love
for adornment. Am I not perfect now? What have I said of hatred and love?
No, no, all that is false. Because you scorn the sea-life so dear to me,
I try to keep hatred; but it may not abide when you stand before me and I
look in your eyes--oh! slay it, slay it quite with the touch of your
lips. My love!' her voice fell softly: 'My love, my love, my love, my
love!' She was chasing the word along all the ranges of derision.

She stood no more than a pace from him, a flexile figure that poised and
swung, to provoke the wild beast i