"No. Your feet are coquetting with the earth. Hermione had no feet. She was borne by invisible wings. I rather fancy that every part of you coquettes with everything it touches. You were making love to the snipe you had just slaughtered when the game-keeper collared you. I was watching from the sedge." "You were!" cried Hermione. "And you never interfered...?" "Pardon me ... I did interfere ... when I thought that there was a chance of your loading him full of lead. You see, I swam ashore to contemplate the early sunlight on the marsh in order to receive certain impressions which might lead to a poem. Then you came along and spoiled it all..." "Thanks..." "Please do not interrupt. If you don't like what I am telling you, just say so and we will talk of something else. I will tell you how beautiful you are. That is, no doubt, a hackneyed subject, but perhaps I can find a new way of putting it..." "Please don't be silly. Go on. I came along and spoiled it all..." "Utterly. I was chock-a-block with æsthetic appreciation. I was delighting in the smell of salt sedge and piny perfumes, revelling in the music of joyous bird-calls, loving the companionship of snipe and curlew and plover ... free-winged sea-nomads like myself, exulting in my human solitude, getting warm after my swim, chewing tobacco..." "What!" "The fifth sense. I had had no breakfast, and I am very fond of chewing tobacco ... when alone. Please don't interrupt. Everything was perfect ... and then you came..." "And spoiled it all..." Hermione's small nose, already tampering sadly with the classic in its modernly rebellious tip, became even more artistically anarchistic. "Oh, very well..." Applebo's voice expressed polite fatigue. "If you _will_ interrupt. I love the shade of your bathing suit. It makes you look like a Nereid ... who has found a copy of _l'Art et la Mode_ chucked off _La Provence_, and got discontented with algæ. Shall I describe your ravishing face? Black storm-clouds your hair, and beneath the snow of your forehead falling into the ultramarine sea of your eyes; a sea so deep and fathomless that..." "Shut up!" "_Pardon_..." "Close your face!" snapped Hermione. "Very well. Only, it's not my fault. You would shove your oar in..." "Do you think that is a nice way to speak to a lady?" "I am not talking to a lady. There are lots of ladies. I am talking to a modern reincarnation of Artemis, who, as you probably do not know, was the ancient Greek personification of physical sweetness and purity, whom the brutal Romans had the cheek to degenerate into Diana, a bloodthirsty goddess of killing things ... snipe or plover or game-keepers or pilot-fishes ... or..." "Oh ... please ..." Hermione looked as if about to break down. "Must I remind you that ... that ... I've had rather a trying ... morning of it..." "Cécile..." cried the Pilot-fish. "I'm sorry."