“What did you say you had for me?” she said.
Half shamefacedly, Stephen drew from his pocket the little box that he had received a few hours before. “Just a trifle,” he said, “that I picked up in Swabia a few years ago. See!” He opened the cover and took out a slender string of fresh-water pearls set in silver, some milk-white, some shimmering prismatically in the moonlight.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Elfie, with artless delight. “And they’re for me?”
“If you’ll take them,” replied Stephen, hurriedly. “You see, they are perfectly valueless little things—but the reason I wanted you to wear them was because, you see, they really belong to you. These pearls are found in one of the headwaters of the Danube, in Undine’s own country. The peasants say they are the drops that Undine wept after she had returned heartbroken to her water world. And so they call these pearls the tears of Undine. Will you have them, Undine?”
He bent toward her tenderly, and she held out her hand with a constrained gesture. “This Undine doesn’t intend to shed any tears of her own,” she answered, “and so, I suppose, that these drops will save her a lot of trouble. Thanks! Yes, do clasp it on. Thank you very much.” She tried to pull her hand away, but Stephen retained it in his own.
“I love you. Don’t you care a bit for me, Elfie?” he blurted, desperately. “Elfie, will you be my wife?”
She snatched her hand away this time, and scrambled to her feet. “Oh,” she cried, “don’t be silly, don’t be sentimental—here by the lovely, sensible sea, too!” Stephen rose and stood staring at her, and she went on with a hurried laugh: “Thank you very much, Mr. Glyn, and now that I have had a proposal, I shall always be a bachelor-lady, and shan’t ever have to worry about being an old maid. And the pearls are lovely, but I never intend to marry anyone—and now, oh, do let’s go into that dear black water.”
She stood, a lovely, pale figure in the moonlight, embarrassed, half-laughing, while her green eyes shot out and streamed a reckless gleam at the young man standing dejected before her. “Do you dare me?” she cried.
Stephen saw that in her present daredevil mood she was equal to anything. “No, please don’t!” he cried. “This time of night, in all those long draperies, it wouldn’t be safe—please don’t!”
“Not safe for Undine?” she laughed, defiantly. “Pooh, who’s afraid?” Stephen put out his hand to restrain her, but she laughed again—one of her long, silent chuckles. “Such a grand chance to show off. I’m not going to miss it!” she cried, and, eluding Stephen’s touch, she sprang like a long, silvery streak over the edge of the breakwater into the phosphorescent blackness beneath. In wrath and anxiety, the young man waited until her head emerged in a whirlpool of silvery fire.