“She is a mermaid, she is a thing of dreams and desires, a siren, a whisper and a seduction. She will lure him with her——”
He stopped.
“Where?” she whispered.
“Into the deeps.”
“The deeps?”
They hung upon a long pause. Melville sought vagueness with infinite solicitude, and could not find it. He blurted out at last: “There can be but one way out of this dream we are all dreaming, you know.”
“And that way?”
“That way—” began Melville and dared not say it.
“You mean,” she said, with a pale face, half awakened to a new thought, “the way is——?”
Melville shirked the word. He met her eyes and nodded weakly.