“Not to the sea,” pleaded Linda, holding back when she perceived the direction of their steps.
“Yes, to the sea!” he cried, pulling her forward with merciless determination. She made no further resistance. She did not even protest when, arrived at the end of their path, he lifted her bodily over the gate that barred their way. She let him help her across the heavily sinking sand, covered with pallid, coarse grass which yielded to every step they took. She let him, when at last they reached the summit of the dunes and saw the sea spread out before them, retain the hand she had given him and lead her down, hardly holding back at all now, to the very edge of the water.
They were both at that moment like persons under the power of some sort of drug. Their eyes were wild and bright and when they spoke their voices had an unnatural solemnity. In the absoluteness of the magnetic current which swept them together, they could do nothing, it seemed, but take all that happened to them for granted—take all—all—as if it could not be otherwise, as if it were unthinkable otherwise.
When they reached the place where the tide turned and the tremulous line of spindrift glimmered in the dying sunlight, the girl stopped at last. Her lips and cheeks were pale as the foam itself. She tried to tear her fingers from his grasp. Her feet, sinking in the wet sand, were splashed by the inflowing water.
“They told me you were afraid,” he muttered, and his voice sounded to them both as if it came from far away, “but I didn’t believe it. I thought it was some little girl’s nonsense. But I see now they were right. You are afraid.”
He rose to his full height, drawing into his lungs with a breath of ecstasy the sharp salt wind that blew across the water’s surface.
“But out of your fear we’ll make a bond between us,” he went on, raising his voice, “a bond which none of them shall be able to break!”
He suddenly bent down and, scooping with his fingers in the water, lifted towards her a handful of sea-foam that gleamed ghostly white as he held it.