saw in the dark eyes a likeness
to the long-remembered eyes of the child, and thought he still read
there human wistfulness and sadness, in spite of the wet dimples and
light laughter that bespoke the soulless life of the sea-creature.

Caius stooped on the rock, putting his hand near the water as he might
have done had he been calling to a kitten or a baby.

"Come, my pretty one, come," he called softly in soothing tones.

The eyes of the water-nymph blinked at him through wet-fringed lids.

"Come near; I will not hurt you," urged Caius, helpless to do aught but
offer blandishment.

He patted the rock gently, as if to make it by that means more inviting.

"Come, love, come," he coaxed. He was used to speak in the same terms of
endearment to a colt of which he was fond; but when a look of undoubted
derision came over the face of the sea-maiden, he felt suddenly guilty
at having spoken thus to a woman.

He stood erect again, and his face burned. The sea-girl's face had
dimpled all over with fun. Colts and other animals cannot laugh at us,
else we might not be so peaceful in our assumption that they never
criticise. Caius before this had always supposed himself happy in his
little efforts to please children and animals; now he knew himself to be
a blundering idiot, and so far from feeling vexed with the laughing face
in the water, he wondered that any other creature had ever permitted his
clumsy caresses.

Having failed once, he now knew not what to do, but stood uncertain,
devouring the beauty of the sprite in the water as greedily as he might
with eyes that were not audacious, for in truth he had begun to feel
very shy.

"What is your name?" he asked, throwing his voice across the water.

The pretty creature raised a hand and pointed at some object behind him.
Caius, turning, knew it to be the epitaph. Yes, that was what his own
intelligence had told him was the only explanation.

Explanation? His reason revolted at the word. There was no explanation
of an impossibility. Yet that the mermaid was the lost child he had now
little doubt, except that he wholly doubted the evidence of his senses,
and that there was a mermaid.

He nodded to her that he understood her meaning about the name, and she
gave him a little wave of her hand as if to say good-bye, and began to
recede slowly, gliding backward, only her head seen above the disturbed
water.

"Don't go," called Caius, much urgency in his words.

But the