He made me jump off the rock on to the ledge over a dazzling crack of sea, he drew me away from the light till I was standing on the tiny beach of sand which emerged like powdered turquoise at the further end. There he left me with his clothes, and returned swiftly to the summit of the entrance-rock. For a moment he stood naked in the brilliant sun, looking down at the spot where the book lay. Then he crossed himself, raised his hands above his head, and dived.
If the book was wonderful, the man is past all description. His effect was that of a silver statue, alive beneath the sea, through whom life throbbed in blue and green. Something infinitely happy, infinitely wise—but it was impossible that it should emerge from the depths sunburnt and dripping, holding the note book on the Deist Controversy between its teeth.
A gratuity is generally expected by those who bathe. Whatever I offered, he was sure to want more, and I was disinclined for an argument in a place so beautiful and also so solitary. It was a relief that he should say in conversational tones "In a place like this one might see the Siren."
I was delighted with him for thus falling into the key of his surroundings. We had been left together in a magic world, apart from all the commonplaces that are called reality, a world of blue whose floor was the sea and whose walls and roof of rock trembled with the sea's reflections. Here, only the fantastic would be tolerable, and it was in that spirit that I echoed his words. "One might easily see the Siren."
He watched me curiously while he dressed. I was parting the sticky leaves of the note book as I sat on the strip of sand.
"Ah!" he said at last. "You may have read the little book that was printed last year. Who would have thought that our Siren would have given the foreigners pleasure!"
(I read it afterwards. Its account is, not unnaturally, incomplete, in spite of there being a woodcut of the young person, and the words of her song.)
"She comes out of this blue water, doesn't she," I suggested "and sits on the rock at the entrance, combing her hair."
I wanted to draw him out, for I was interested in his sudden gravity, and there was a suggestion of irony in his last remark that puzzled me.