that the pool is green. There is magic abroad tonight. Let me
catch it! Let me catch it! Afterwards!--when the tide comes up--we will
drink our fill of love."

He spoke as if urged by strong excitement, and having spoken his arms
relaxed. But she clung to him still.

"Oh, darling, I am frightened--I am frightened! I couldn't come sooner.
I had a feeling--of being watched. I nearly--very nearly--didn't come at
all. And now I am here--I feel--I feel--afraid."

He bent his face to hers again. His hand rested lightly, reassuringly
upon her head. "No, no! There is nothing to frighten you, my
passion-flower. If you had only come to me sooner it would have made it
easier for you. But now there is no time." The soothing note in his
voice sounded oddly strained, as though an undernote of fever throbbed
below it. "You're not going to fail me," he urged softly. "Think how
much it means to you--to me! And there is only half an hour left, dear.
Give me that half-hour to catch the magic! Then--when the tide comes
up"--his voice sank, he whispered deeply into her ear--"I will teach you
the greatest magic this old world knows."

She thrilled at his words, thrilled through her trembling. She lifted
her face to the moonlight. "I love you!" she said. "Oh, I love you!"

"And you will do this one thing for me?" he urged.

She threw her arms wide. "I would die for you," she told him
passionately.

A moment she stood so, then with a swift movement that had in it
something of fierce surrender she sprang away from him on to the flat
rock above the pool where but two nights before the gates of love's
wonderland had first opened to her.

Here for a second she stood, motionless it seemed. And then strangely,
amazingly, she moved again. The brown garment slipped from her, and like
a streak of light, she was gone, and the still pool received her with a
rippling splash as of fairy laughter.

The man on the brink drew a short, hard breath, and put his hand to his
eyes as if dazed. And from beyond the Spear Point there sounded the deep
tolling of the bell-buoy as it rocked on the rising tide.

CHAPTER VII

THE DEATH CURRENT

The pool was still again, still as a sheet of glass, reflecting the
midnight glory of the moon. It was climbing high in the sky, and the
cloud-wreaths were mounting towards it as incense smoke from an altar.
The thick, black curtain that hung in the west was growing like a
monstrous shadow, threatening to ove