He drew his white fingers over the strings and made a thin twittering of music sweeter than comes from the clarsach-strings, but foreign and uncanny. To Marseli it brought notions of far-off affairs, half sweet, half sad, like the edges of dreams and the moods that come on one in loneliness and strange places, and one tune he played was a tune she had heard the French traffickers sing in the bay in the slack seasons.
“Let me sing you a song,” said he, “all for yourself.”
“You are bard?” she said, with a pleased face.
He said nothing, but touched on the curious harp, and sang to the girl's eyes, to the spark of them and the dance of them and the deep thought lurking in their corners, to her lips crimson like the rowan and curled with pride, to the set of breast and shoulder, and the voice melting on the tongue.
It was all in the tune and the player's looks, for the words were fairy to the girl, but so plain the story, her face burned, and her eyes filled with a rare confusion.
“'Tis the enchantment of fairydom,” said she. “Am not I the oinseach to listen? I'll warrant yon have sung the same to many a poor girl in all airts of the world?”
The little one laughed and up with the shoulders. “On my sword,” quo' he, “I could be content to sing to you and France for all my time. Wilt come with a poor Prince on a Prince's honour?”
He kissed her with hot lips; his breath was in her hair; enchantment fell on her like a plaid, but she tore herself away and ran home, his craving following at her heels.
That night Marseli's brothers came to knives with the French traffickers, and the morning saw the black-avised ones sailing out over-sea for home. Back to French Foreland they came no more, and Finne-side took to its own brewing for lack of the red wine of France.
That, too, was the last of the Sea-Fairy.