I could but bend my head, for her siren voice had woven round my faculties a spell of charmed silence, and not one of Circe's victims was ever more powerless than I was then. When I looked up she had gone. How I lived through that day and night I scarcely know. I can in fact remember nothing clearly of the hours that followed until the moment came when I saw her seated before me in the boat, the rudder lines slipping slowly through her folded hands. It was early in the morning of an absolutely perfect day. Of the river, the witching scenery, I knew but noted little, for I looked only upon her face. She was simply and yet elegantly clad in some rich clinging stuff of purest white; her loveliness it is beyond me to portray. But this I know--she seemed to love me, and her mood was yielding and submissive to the point of tenderness. Very generously did she fulfil her promise. As I rowed, she sang to me the sweetest songs of France, and Italy, and love songs all. It was indeed a rapturous, golden dream. When at times she ceased to sing we neither of us spoke, but gazed silently into each other's eyes, until the music in her woke to song again. We came at noon to the pretty little island she foretold; and I made her sit upon a rug while I prepared our lunch. It was strange indeed how truly all her prophesies came true. The lunch was a very merry interlude. We both ate heartily, and we pledged each other often in champagne. Afterwards we started on our way again, and only when we came upon a lock did I remember that there was a world of living people near us. So slow and idle was our journeying that twilight had already fallen as we passed by Staines. About that time I noticed that Marion maintained a longer silence than her wont, and a little later I felt a sudden thrill to see her shivering. She was looking over the side of the boat, gazing sadly on the rippled surface of the stream. "Are you cold, dear one?" I asked, and I paused to watch her, leaning on the sculls. She shook her head. "Then you shivered at a thought," I ventured. "Please to tell me what it was?" "I thought of death," she said, and turning, looked into my eyes. Her own were alight with a rich sombre glow. "Of death! and why of death--to-day?" "Death, Agar, my friend," she answered--she had named me so since morning,--"is never long a stranger from my thoughts." "What! and you so young, so beautiful," I cried. "It is because I fear death, Agar. I have seen him in a thousand forms, and each form was more dreadful than the last. There are some who grow familiar with his face and finish by despising him. I, on the contrary, fear him more and more. But you, my friend, how do you regard him?" "I have never asked myself the question." "Then ask it now!" "A morbid fancy, Marion!" "Yet humour me, my friend; I wish to know." To me her eyes seemed passionately curious, and I marvelled at her mood. But I answered gravely.