On a fragment of a broken capital that lay in the water near the island shore of Ortyggia sat three lovely ladies. They looked young and beautiful as the day, but they were very, very old. They had known the place before the first Greek ship bore the first Greek colonists to Sicily. The broken capital was the last bit of a temple that had been reared in their honor ages ago, for these were the real sea-nymphs. They had come back from the unknown countries where they went when men forgot them, and the monks shattered their beautiful marble statues to replace them with waxen virgins dressed in tinsel. They were taking a journey just to see what sort of a place this world had grown to be. They were all three rather low-spirited—as much so as sea-nymphs can be. “This is all so different,” said Arethusa. “It was hardly sadder in the great siege; I could hardly find the place where my fountain was once.” “And nothing of Alpheus?” said Cymodoce with a little smile. “No, thank Heaven!” said Arethusa; “the stream is there, but it has another name. I wonder what has become of the old gentleman? My dears, you can’t think what a torment he was. I really don’t know what I should have done but for Diana.” “Maybe you would have married him,” said Panope. “He was very devoted to you.” “Not he,” said Arethusa. “He was determined to have his own way, but he didn’t get it.” “Sing something,” said Cymodoce. “What concerts we used to have on this very shore! Oh dear!” Arethusa began to sing. I only wish you had been there to hear her. “Years ago when the world was young, And this weary time was yet to be, A little bay lay the hills among Where the hills slope down to the sand and sea. “The shepherd came down to the cool seashore, Fearless and tall and fair was he; Careless the cornel spear he bore, As he paced the sand along the sea. “Low in the sky the red moon hung, The wind went wandering wild and free; To and fro the foam-bells swung Off from the sand into the sea. “‘Come up, my love,’ he called, ‘oh come! Give, oh goddess, once more to me That fairest face in the whitening foam, On the pebbly marge ’twixt the sand and sea.’ “The sunset faded like smouldering brand, And never the nymph again saw he; The shadow sloped from the tall headland Off from the sand, out o’er the sea. “His was a being that, born to-day, Grows old to-morrow and dies, and she Lived on for ages as fair alway, To sing on the shore ’twixt the sand and the sea. “Yet oh, my lover, by this right hand, It was fate, not I, that was false to thee; For thine was the life of the solid land, And I was a thing of the restless sea.”