He laughed for the first time. That was his only reply.
"Is that the end?" I asked, feeling curiously ashamed.
"I never killed her murderer, for by the time my wrists were well, he was in America; and one cannot kill a priest. As for Giuseppe, he went all over the world too, looking for someone else who has seen the Siren—either a man, or, better still, a woman, for then the child might still have been born. At last he came to Liverpool,—is the district probable?—and there he began to cough, and spat blood until he died.
"I do not suppose there is anyone living now who has seen her. There has seldom been more than one in a generation, and never in my life will there be both a man and a woman from whom that child can be born, who will fetch up the Siren from the sea, and destroy silence, and save the world!"
"Save the world?" I cried. "Did the prophecy end like that?"
He leant back against the rock, breathing deep. Through all the blue-green reflections I saw him colour. I heard him say: "Silence and loneliness cannot last for ever. It may be a hundred or a thousand years, but the sea lasts longer, and she shall come out of it and sing." I would have asked him more, but at that moment the whole cave darkened, and there rode in through its narrow entrance the returning boat.
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