He sat there that evening, silently waiting. Over him spread the blazing southern stars strewn on purple velvet. The arching palm fronds whispered about him as the night breeze stirred them. Ahead, down the slope of beach and lower slope of rocks, the sea lay quietly breathing. A quarter moon was following the vanished sun. It dropped a bright silver path on the water; it glorified the beach; it laid upon the brooding little island an amorous spell. Arturo sat, edged with silver. Would she see him? Would she be too frightened? Was she, perhaps, not here at all? The moon fell lower. He went, with sudden thought, back to his plane. He sat again under the palm, and the low voice of his violin throbbed into the somnolent night. He wondered if she would be as frightened, as emotion-swept as himself. I think, as he sat there softly playing, that the world of 1990 was far away from Arturo. I think his mind must have been flung back, past all the counted centuries to those fabulous, magic times when the sea had no history, but only legend. One of the sailors of Ulysses, with his ears stuffed with wax against temptation, but being more courageous, or perhaps weaker than his fellows, might have slipped ashore--and waited thus, with the wax cast away, singing perhaps a soft song of his own to tell that he had yielded. Arturo must have trembled, as the song of his violin was trembling. Was this a daughter of Amphitrite, mockingly cast in the fashion of a woman? Or was it a human girl? And then he saw her. Partly behind him, among the long, slanting shadows of the palms. A dark figure edged in a silver patch. It stood motionless; then it moved toward him a trifle, and stood again. Arturo laid his violin and bow beside him on the sand and very quietly got to his feet. He could see her better now, only a few yards away. A small, slim figure of a girl, white-limbed, but flushed like moonlit coral. A brief, dangling robe, which might have been green; smooth, lustrous green, as though a fabric of softly woven metal, painted green by the sea. He stood tense, unmoving. The moonlight was on him--his slight, boyish figure of long, slim black trousers, and white ruffled shirt; his black tousled hair thick in waves over his pale forehead. He stood trembling. She moved again toward him. The moonlight struck her face. Ah, this must be a human girl! He saw her features--a face of strange, soft beauty; wide eyes, parted coral lips; a face, timorous, gentle, eagerly wondering. And framing her face, lying in waves upon her coral shoulders, a tangled mass of tawny hair. No fabulous siren, this! A strange, but very human girl--and yet, for all that, a siren. Arturo spoke, tremblingly, very gently. “Nereid! Can you hear me? Can you understand?” She stood frozen. But her lips parted with a smile. He said: “Nereid!” He moved slowly toward her. CHAPTER VI. THEIR LONELY, LOVELY LITTLE ISLAND.