"They are cold-blooded," he reminded her, beginning to recover himself. "Ah!" she said musingly. "But what right have we to take away their lives? They must be--oh so happy!--in the beautiful wide ocean! I am sorry I had a hand in destroying them. I shall never do it again." "You have very little to reproach yourself with," he said, smiling. "Ah! now you are laughing at me. I know I'm not big and strong, and that my muscles could have been dispensed with. But the will was there, the intention was there," she said with her serious air. "Oh, of course, you are a piscicide in intention," he admitted. "But you will enjoy the mackerel all the same." "No, I won't," she said with a charming little shake of the head, "I won't eat any." "What! you will nevermore eat fish?" "Never," she said emphatically. "I love fish, but I won't eat 'em! only tinned things, like sardines. Oh, what a little stupid I am! Don't laugh at me again, please. I forgot the sardines must be caught first, before they are tinned, mustn't they?" "Not necessarily," he said. "It often suffices if sprats are caught." She laughed. Her laugh was a low musical ripple, like one of the little sunlit waves translated into sound. "Twenty-two shillings!" cried the owner of a lot. "I'll give 'ee eleven!" said Ellaline's companion, and the girl turned her head to listen to the violent chaffering that ensued, and when she went away she only gave John Beveridge a nod and a smile. But he followed her with his eyes as she toiled up the hill, growing ever smaller and daintier against the horizon. The second time he met her was at the Cove, a little way from the village, where great foliage-crowned cliffs came crescent-wise round a space of shining sand, girdled at its outer margin by tumbling green, foam-crested surges. Huge mammoth-like boulders stood about, bathing their feet in the incoming tide, the cormorants perching cautiously down the precipitous half-worn path that led to the sands. There was a point at which the landward margin of the shore beneath first revealed itself to the descending pedestrian, and it was a point so slippery that it was thoughtless of Fate to have included Ellaline in the area of vision. She was lying, sheltered by a blue sunshade, on the golden sand, with her head on the base of the cliff, abstractedly tearing a long serpentine weed to dark green ribbons, and gazing out dreamily into the throbbing depths of sea and sky. There was an open book before her, but she did not seem to be reading. John Beveridge saved himself by grasping a stinging bush, and he stole down gently towards her, forgetting to swear. He came to her with footsteps muffled by the soft sand, and stood looking down at her, admiring the beauty of the delicate flushed young face and the flaxen hair against the sober background of the aged cliff with its mellow subtly-fused tints. "Thinking of the little fishes--or of the gods?" he said at last in a loud pleasant voice.