“Even if I were free,” he continued to think, “we should only grow apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set. “Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I cannot compel anybody to follow me. “So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back. When can I set my feet on when this is gone?” The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of Siegmund’s mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed, looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head. “I feel as if it were burning into me,” thought Siegmund abstractedly. “It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me ill.” Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair to the sun. Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her thought-activity. Presently she said: “This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?” They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on which to lie. “Shall we not go under the rocks?” said Helena. “Look!” he said, “the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more suffocating, there.” So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat was dreadful. “My arms, Siegmund,” said she. “They feel as if they were dipped in fire.” Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat. “Are you sure it is not bad for you—your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?” He laughed stupidly. “That is all right,” he said. He knew that the sun was burning through him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication. As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena’s mist-curtain, he said: “I _think_ we should be able to keep together if”—he faltered—“if only I could have you a little longer. I have never had you …” Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic. He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his lips on her cheek, he murmured: “I should be able, shouldn’t I, Helena?” “You are always able!” she cried. “It is I who play with you at hiding.” “I have really had you so little,” he said.