I must have lost myself for a few minutes, for when I opened my eyes everything before them was changed, as completely as the scene shifters change a stage picture. The little bay was crowded with rolling seas of white, thick mist, like an Alpine lake. Billow on billow it rolled in, faintly luminous here and there, breaking as smoke breaks, on the beach. As I stared, lost in the beauty of it, two great gold arrows from the sun behind me cut into the thickest of it and tore it like a curtain, and in the rent appeared two human figures, walking as it might be on clouds to earth. More than mortal tall they loomed in the mist, and no marbles I have ever seen--not even that Wonder of Melos--is so immortally lovely as they were. The woman wore a veil of crimson vine-leaves that wound about her hips and dropped on one side nearly to her knee, around the man's neck a great lock of her long hair lay loose and on his head a rough wreath of the red leaves shone in the arrow of sunlight. Beside them a monstrous hound appeared suddenly: a trailing vine dripped like blood from his great jowl. I could not have told what she looked like to save my life: she was what the world means when it says woman--beautiful, certainly, but no one person. One arm was on his shoulder, the other hand lay on the animal's head; the mist covered their feet and they appeared as aerial, as unreal as figures in some Assumption. But they were not through with earth, not they: they were humanity triumphant--the very crown and flower of creation. They came up from the sea with the grave, contented smile of the old gods on their faces. Nature, working patiently at her Saurians, had had this in her mind from the beginning, and I believed in that moment that God had indeed allowed her to perfect her last work in His image! For perhaps three heart-beats I saw them there, framed in the luminous mist, and then it rolled over them, swiftly, silently, and wiped them out, and I stumbled from the rock-seat and ran back across the beach, a great lump stiffening my throat and a hard, frightened jealousy nearly stifling me, to my shame and surprise. For I had known Roger twenty-five years and yet I had never had the least idea of the man! PART THREE IN WHICH THE STREAM JOINS WITH OTHERS AND PLUNGES DOWN A CLIFF He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine, He's left his folk and friends and all, He's off to watch the cold sea shine, To brew for aye the salt sea brine, The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall. _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ CHAPTER IX MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS