She left him and he obeyed her mechanically—only looking nervously round for a moment as he folded his coat containing the precious manuscript and laid a heavy stone upon it.
He plunged out into the waveless sea with fierce, impetuous strokes. The water yielded to his violent movements like a lake of quicksilver. Dazzling threads and flakes and rainbows flashed up, wavered, trembled, glittered and vanished as he swam forward. With his eyes fixed on the immense dome of sky above him, where, like the rim of a burnished shield, it cut down into the horizon, he struck out incessantly, persistently, seeking, in thus embracing a universe of white light, to find the escape he craved.
Strange thoughts poured through his brain as he swam on. The most novel, the most terrific of the points contained in those dithyrambic notes left behind under the stone surged up before him and, mingling with them in fierce exultant affection, the image of Baptiste beckoned to him out of a molten furnace of white light.
Far away behind him at last he heard the voice of his companion. Whether she intended him to turn he did not know, for her words were inaudible, but when he did he perceived that she was standing, a slim white figure, at the water’s edge. He watched her with feelings that were partly bitter and partly tender.
“Why does she stand there so long?” he muttered to himself. “Why doesn’t she get in and start swimming?”
As if made aware of his thought by some telepathic instinct the girl at that moment slipped into the water and began walking slowly forward, her hands clasped behind her head. When the water reached above her knees she swung up her hands and with a swift spring of her white body, disappeared from view. She remained so long invisible that Sorio grew anxious and took several vigorous strokes towards her. She reappeared at last, however, and was soon swimming vigorously to meet him.
When they met she insisted on advancing further and so, side by side, with easy, leisurely movements, they swam out to sea, their eyes on the far horizon and their breath coming and going in even reciprocity.
“Far enough!” cried Sorio at last, treading water and looking closely at her.
There was a strange wild light in the girl’s face. “Why go back?” her look seemed to say—“Why not swim on and on together—until the waters cover us and all riddles are solved?” There was something in her expression at that moment—as, between sky and sea, the two gazed mutely at one another—which seemed to interpret some terrible and uttermost mystery. It was, however, too rare a moment to endure long, and they turned their heads landwards.
The return took longer than they had anticipated and the girl was swimming very slowly and displaying evident signs of exhaustion before they got near shore. As soon as she could touch the bottom with her feet she hurried out and staggered, with stiff limbs, across the sands to where she had left her clothes.