Years passed, and Lucilla never saw the windfairies again, though she watched for them every night. She grew up to be a beautiful young woman, and her father was very proud of her. She was as tall and as lithe as a willow wand, and when she ran or danced it seemed as if she were as light as a feather blown in the wind. There were few people to see her, or tell her she was beautiful, for save the fisher folk who lived in little cottages on the beach, scarce anybody came to the downs. But all who saw her admired her beauty, and most of all her wonderful dancing. Sometimes she would go out on the downs, and dance and run there by herself, and her father would look at her and say: “Heaven help the maid! I don’t know whom she has learned it from, but I have never seen a dancer who can come nigh her.” Then sometimes she would go down to the sea-shore, and this she loved to do best of all, and there she would dance with the waves, and move with them as they slid up to her feet and drew back, and to those who watched, it seemed as if she and they were one together. The time came when her father wished her to be married, and among the young fishermen and the country folk who came to the mill from the farms across the country, she had suitors enough, but always she said when a young man came to woo her, “First let me see how you can dance, for as dancing is the thing I love best in the world, it would be a pity that I and my husband should not be able to dance together,” and as none of them could dance as she did, she sent them all away, saying she would wait for a husband till she could find a man who could dance to her liking. But one day there was a great storm, and a big ship was blown on to the shore close to the mill, and among the sailors was a young fellow with black curly hair and bright eyes and white teeth, and when he saw Lucilla, he said to himself, “I will wed that girl and take her home for my wife.” So one day as they sat on the downs together he begged her to marry him, and go back with him to his own land; he said he would give up going to sea, and would live with her in a little cottage and make their bread by fishing. Then Lucilla said, as she had said to all her other suitors, “First let me see how you can dance, for I will never marry any man who cannot dance with me.” The sailor swore he could dance as well as any man in the world, for all sailors can dance, he said, and they began to dance together on the downs. The sailor danced well and merrily, but Lucilla danced faster, and seemed as if she were made of feather-down; and then the sailor, seeing that his dancing was as nothing to hers, caught her by the waist, and held her still, crying, “My sweetheart, I cannot dance as you can, but my arms are strong enough to hold you still and keep you from dancing with any man but me.”