leaving. I saw figures standing there.

"'They'll go home soon,' I said, and I turned my eyes steadfastly toward
the sheeny track, all crimpled and curled with fibrous net-work, and
rowed on.

"It was a glorious night,--a night when one toss of a mermaid's hair,
made visible above the waters, as she flew along the track I was
pursuing, would have been worth a life of rowing against this incoming
tide.

"You have never tried to row, Miss Anna. You don't know how hard it is
to push a boat out of a river when the sea sends up full veins to course
the strong arms she reaches up into the land."

For one moment, as he addressed me, his eyes lost their rapt look; they
went back to it, and he to his story.

"I saw the fin of a shark dancing in the waves. Sharks were nothing
for me. I did not look down into my boat. No, men never do; they look
_beyond where they are_. They're a sorry race, Miss Anna.

"The shark went down after some bit of prey more delicious than I. My
will would have been hard for him to manage. I forgot the shark. I
forgot the figures standing, waiting on the shore that I had left, ere
Lettie and the shadow that walked with her, whatever it was, had come to
it. I forgot everything but the phosphorescent dew that would cool my
spirit, athirst for what I knew not, ravenous for refreshment, searching
for manna where it never grew. The plaudits of yesterday were ringing in
my ears, the wavelets danced to their music, my oars kept time to the
vanity measure of my beating mind. Still I was not content. I wanted
something more. A faded flower, an althea-bud, was still pendent from my
coat. I had taken it out from the mass of flowers with which I had been
honored. I noticed it now. The moon dewed it over with its yellowness.
'An offering to the sea-nymphs!' I said, and I cast it forth into the
wide field. It did not go down, as I had fancied it would. No, it went
on, whither the movement of the ceaseless dance of motion carried it. I
leaned upon my oars and watched it until it went out of the illuminated
track. I was now in the bay, outside the river. I looked once more
shoreward. I had threaded the curve of the stream, and could not see
around the point. No living human thing was in sight. I was alone with
Nature in the night, when she looks down glories, and spreads out fields
where we long to walk, and our footsteps are fast in clay. I was not far
from shore; it lay dark behind me; it was only before that I