Produced by Carlos Colón, the University of Toronto and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase. Blank pages have been eliminated. Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. THE _STORY_ OF THE SIREN BY E. M. FORSTER [Illustration] _Printed by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, Paradise Road, Richmond_ 1920 THE STORY OF THE SIREN Few things have been more beautiful than my note book on the Deist Controversy as it fell downward through the waters of the Mediterranean. It dived, like a piece of black slate, but opened soon, disclosing leaves of pale green, which quivered into blue. Now it had vanished, now it was a piece of magical india rubber stretching out to infinity, now it was a book again, but bigger than the book of all knowledge. It grew more fantastic as it reached the bottom, where a puff of sand welcomed it and obscured it from view. But it reappeared, quite sane though a little tremulous, lying decently open on its back, while unseen fingers fidgeted among its leaves. "It is such a pity" said my aunt, "that you will not finish your work in the Hotel. Then you would be free to enjoy yourself and this would never have happened." "Nothing of it but will change into something rich and strange," warbled the chaplain, while his sister said "Why it's gone into the water." As for the boatmen, one of them laughed, while the other, without a word of warning, stood up and began to take his clothes off. "Holy Moses!" cried the Colonel. "Is the fellow mad?" "Yes, thank him dear," said my aunt: "that is to say tell him he is very kind, but perhaps another time." "All the same I do want my book back," I complained. "It's for my Fellowship Dissertation. There won't be much left of it by another time." "I have an idea," said some woman or other through her parasol. "Let us leave this child of nature to dive for the book while we go on to the other grotto. We can land him either on this rock or on the ledge inside, and he will be ready when we return."