“It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,” she said, startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said it. He pressed his mouth on hers. “Not for you,” he thought, by reflex. “You can’t go that way yet.” But he said nothing, strained her very tightly, and kept her lips. They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund stooped, and from among the water’s combings picked up an electric-light bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She took the thing delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness. “Isn’t it remarkable!” she exclaimed joyously. “The sea must be very, very gentle—and very kind.” “Sometimes,” smiled Siegmund. “But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,” she said. She breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she inhaled its fine savour. “It would not have treated _you_ so well,” he said. She looked at him with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her, waited upon her words and movements attentively. “It is a graceful act on the sea’s part,” she said. “Wotan is so clumsy—he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping fishes, _pizzicato_!—but the sea—” Helena’s speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was not lucid. “But life’s so full of anti-climax,” she concluded. Siegmund smiled softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine her words. “There’s no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and float,” he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to forget he had spoken. There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father: “I will give it to the children,” he said. She looked up at him, loved him for the thought. Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles. “Would you like this? I found it down there,” said Siegmund, offering her the bulb. She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently she was not going to say anything.