"Do you like it, Erik?"
He laughed in answer. Her head was turned toward him and he could see her dark eyes smiling against the water.
"Wouldn't it be nice," she said softly, "to swim out together like lovers in a poem? Out and out! And never come back!"
Her voice, slipping across the water, became unfamiliar. They continued moving.
"Yes," he answered at length, smiling back at her. "It would be easy. And I'm willing."
They swam in silence. He began to wonder. Were they going out and out and never coming back? Perhaps they were doing that. One might become involved in a suicide like that. He closed his eyes and his head moved through the coldness of the water. What matter? What was there to come back to? All hours were the same. He might wait until a thousand more had dragged themselves to an ending. Or swim out and out. When he grew tired he would kiss her and say, "It is easier to make our own endings than to wait for them." The sun would be shining and her eyes would sing to him for an instant over the water.
"We'd better turn now, Erik."
"No," he smiled. "We're lovers in a poem."
She came nearer.
"Come, we must go back, Erik."