They stood side by side, not looking at each other but at the ocean, at the curling, magnificent breakers which the southeast wind was driving in. The sun shone, the air was magic. Bird cries reached them, a tiny treble to the bass of the water’s roar. “Out of the ocean you came,” he said. “Will you slip away and return into it again some day, I wonder? Mermaid! The name is poetry and the story is romance. When you go back, you must look for me. I shall be a wreathed Triton, blowing upon a conch shell. I shall be among those who pull the sea god’s chariot while you will be among those who swim in his escort. And we shall be much together. Always.” “You have done it!” she said, exultingly. “You have become a man, and yet you have not lost the child and the poet in you. You are really the Guy Vanton I first knew, only grown, matured, with the world before you.” “I have it all yet to conquer,” he told her, half laughing. “Your greatest conquest has been made.” He reached for her hand, pressed it, and held it. “Guy,” she said, suddenly, “will you marry me?” She felt his hand tremble. The tremendous tide within her swept on, and in her ears there was a noise like singing. She felt his arm about her, and it was needed. She made out his voice, saying: “Mermaid, will you have me? Will you--have--me? Oh, if you will!” It was a cry of entreaty, a prayer, a thanksgiving. She suddenly slipped down onto the sand and quite ridiculously collapsed in a heap. And he was on the sand beside her, folding her to him, murmuring little words that were inaudible and precious. She felt his hair against her cheek and for an instant their strange eyes confronted each other. In his were brown and golden lights; hers were less brilliantly blue, as if the surface reflection were gone, and looking into them it would be possible, almost for the first time, to guess at the depths concealed by their mirror-like quality. They sat there for a long time while the sun declined slowly through the heavens, a futile effort of the wheeling universe to measure by cycles and hours a moment of eternity. X The death of “Mrs. Vanton”--no one ever was heartless enough to call her anything else--left entirely to Guy the moderate fortune which had been Captain Vanton’s. And now he had a use for it. Mermaid and her husband travelled about, crossing the Atlantic and visiting Paris, where Guy showed his wife some scenes of his boyhood. They rambled through little towns. And in these the streets seemed always to be crowded with youngsters at play. Mermaid had hold of Guy’s arm. He felt her red-gold hair brush his cheek. “Children!” he said, and fell silent. “We, too, were children once. I think we will always remain children, you and I. The spirit does not die, but the body must be renewed. It is ours to renew it.”