islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did
not long confine ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to
every variety of manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with
three-triangle flights and sliding lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing
with the sail for salmon, live-baiting with the float for pike, daping
with blue-bottles, casting with artificial flies, and I could not say in
which she became the most carelessly adept, for all soon seemed as old
and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth.

* * * * *

On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent
health: a day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I
forget now what circumstance had caused me to mention the date long
beforehand in, I think, Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any
count of it, nor was I even sure that my calendar was not faulty by a
day. But at ten in the morning of what I called the 21st, descending by
my private spiral in flannels with some trout and par bait, and
tackle--I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly right to
be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a
most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers.

I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in
rather a frippery of _mousseline de soie_, all cream-laced, with
wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the
ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her
face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her
feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings--a divinely pale
pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she
smelled like heaven, God knows.

I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and
pallid:

'It is the day!'

'I--perhaps--' I said, or some incoherency like that.

I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my
manner.

'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another
silence.

'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again. Only, I could
not suppose that you would count up the days. You are ... considerate.
Perhaps--but--'

'Tell Leda?'

'Perhaps.... I was going to say ... you might come fishing with me....'

'O luck!' she went softly.

I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredib