and crouched, rocked with passionate sighs.

'But I hate, I hate!' she moaned; for a contrary impulse bade her lay
upon his breast her hand, and on his lips hers, and dare all her asking
from his eyes. A disloyal hand went out and hovered over his heart. She
plucked it back, aware of a desperate peril, vague, awful, alluring to
destruction, like a precipice yawning under night.

His hair was yellow-brown, matching the mellow sands of the under-sea; it
ran into crisp waves, and over the brow curved up to crest like a breaker
that stayed unbroken. No such hair did the sea grow--no hair, no head,
that often her hand had so wanted to handle; ay, graciously--at first--to
hold the crispness, to break the crest; and ever because she dared not
did fierceness for tearing arise. So slight an inclination, ungratified,
extended to vast dimensions, and possessed her entire. And she called it
hate. How long, how long, she complained, shall I bear with this thirst?
Yet if long, as long shall the quenching be. He shall but abandon his
soul, and no doubt shall restrain me from touching as I will.

She covered her face from the light of day, for she contemplated an
amazement to nature: deadly hate enfolded in the arms of strong love.

When the tide brimmed up and kissed him awake, Diadyomene was away.

Another manner of Diadyomene vexed her lover's next coming: she was
mockery incarnate, and unkind; for she would not condescend to his
limitations, nor forsake a golden spongy nest two fathoms and more below
breath. Yet her laughter and her eyes summoned him down, and he, poor
fool, displayed before her derision his deficiency, slow to learn that
untiring submission to humiliation would win no gracious reward at last.
And the young witch was as slow to learn that no exasperation she could
contrive would sting him into amorous close for mastery.

Christian was no tempered saint. Diadyomene gained a barren, bitter
victory, for he fled.

At sundown a monitress, mounting the night tower, by a loophole of the
stair looking down on the great rock saints, spied a figure kneeling
devoutly. When the moon rose late the same kept vigil still. In the wan
of dawn the same, overtaken by sleep, lay low against the feet of St.
Margaret.

Though Christian slept, he heard the deep bell voices of the three.
Articulate they grew, and entered the human soul with reproof and
exhortation and promise. He woke, and intrepid rose to face the unruly
clamour