By a flight of startled sea-birds, he nears. She casts off that drapery. Through the gorge comes Christian, dripping, and stands at gaze. With half-shut eyes, with mirth at heart, she lay motionless for him to discern and approach. She noted afresh, well pleased, his stature and comely proportions; and as he neared, his ruddy tan, his singular fair hair and eyes, she marked with no distaste. The finer the make of this creature, the finer her triumph in its ruin. He came straight opposite, till only the breadth of water at her feet was between. 'Why has "Diadyomene, Diadyomene" summoned me?' he said. Against the dark setting of olive weed her moist skin glistened marvellously white in the sun. A gaze grave and direct meeting his could not reconcile him to the sight of such beauty bare and unshrinking. He dropped self-conscious eyes; they fell upon the same nude limbs mirrored in the water below. There he saw her lips making answer. 'I sent you no summons.' Christian looked up astonished, and an 'Oh' of unmistakable satisfaction escaped him that surprised and stung the young witch. He stood at fault and stammered, discountenanced, an intruder requiring excuse. 'A seagull cried your name, and winged me through the reefs to shore, and led me here.' 'I sent you no summons,' she repeated. A black surmise flashed that the white bird was her familiar, doing her bidding once, this time compassing independent mischief. Then his face burned as the sense of the reiteration reached his wits: she meant to tell him that he lied. Confounded, he knew not how to justify himself to her. There, below his downcast eyes, her reflected face waited, quite emotionless. Suddenly her eyes met his: she had looked by way of his reflection to encounter them. Down to the mirror she dipped one foot, and sent ripples to blot out her image from his inspection. It was a mordant touch of rebuke. 'Because I pardoned one trespass, you presume on another.' 'I presume nothing. I came, unhappily, only as I believed at your expressed desire.' 'How? I desire you?' She added: 'You would say now you were loath to come.' 'I was,' he admitted, ashamed for his lack of gratitude. 'Go--go!' she said, with a show of proud indifference, 'and see if the gull that guided you here without my consent will guide you hence _without my consent_.' Insult and threat he recognised, and answered to the former first. 'Whatever you lay to my charge, I may hardly say a word in defence without earning further disgrace for bare truth.' 'You did not of yourself return here? For far from you was any desire ever to set eyes on me again?' So well did she mask her mortal resentment, that the faint vibration in her voice conveyed to him suspicion of laughter. 'On you--I think I had none--but for one thing,' he said, with honest exactitude. 'And that?' Reluctantly he gave the truth in naked simplicity. 'I did desire to see the colour of your eyes.'