TWO
Morning is an indeterminate time for an appointment. Trehearne made it early, clambering over the spray-wet rocks. The sun was warm, and the sea was very blue, flecked with white foam. A high excitement burned in him. He had not slept, thinking of the girl Shairn and the man Kerrel, trying to analyze the strangeness that clung about them and touched some buried chord within himself. He had not succeeded.
There was something almost fierce in the way he moved. He was oppressed by a fear that Shairn would not come. He felt that she was playing some game of her own with him, though for what purpose he could not guess. But having started the game, he was going to see to it that she played it out. If she did not come he would find her, if he had to take the stones of St. Malo apart to do it.
He found the cove. It was deserted. Reason told him that he was impatient, but he was disappointed and angry all the same. Then, looking closer, he saw footprints in the sand, small naked ones leading to the water. A beach robe and a pair of sandals were tucked into a crevice in the rocks.
He searched the waves that rolled idly in between two grey, tumbled shoulders. There was no sign of her. Trehearne's eyes took on a hard, bright glint. He stripped off his shirt and slacks and plunged into the cold surf.
He was an excellent swimmer. In his college days he had gone through a phase of being a star athlete, until he was stopped by a vague conviction that his physique had been designed for something more important than leaping over bars and running arbitrary distances on a cinder track. He had never found the important thing, but the conviction remained with him. It was part of that pride which was the mainspring of his character—a meaningless pride, he was forced to admit, which had served only to make trouble between himself and the world.
He made the circuit of the cove twice before he found her, hiding among the broken rocks of the north wall, half veiled in glistening weed, laughing at him. He reached for her and she went under him like a dolphin, breaking water ten feet away to splash and dive again.
He chased her down into the rustling blue-green depths and up again to the sunlight and the foam, and her body was the color of silver, fleet and lithe and wondrously strong. He might have caught her, but he did not, only touching her with his fingers to show her that he could. Her hair was unbound, a streaming darkness around her head, and her mouth was red, and her eyes were two green dancing motes of the sea itself, unknowable, taunting, fickle as the waves.
At last she rolled over on her back to float, breathless, pleased with herself and him.
"Let us rest!" she said, and he floated near her, watching the motion of her white arms in the water. The lines of an old poem came unbidden to his tongue.