will not,' she said peremptorily, 'nor shall you take counsel with
her, nor come back well charged for convincing me of what you may be
pleased to call sin; for presently we part for ever--for ever, alive or
dead.'

That struck silence for a minute. Then Christian straightened and said:

'I have then much to say first. I have a message to you.'

'To me--a message!'

'The message of the Gospel. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost.'

'Ah yes,' she said; 'we were to return to that. "Suffered and died," you
said of one--the Son.'

The young gospeller took up his task void of all vain conceit; but
humility, simplicity, and honesty alone could not prevail over the
quick-witted witch when she was bent on entangling him. A long hour he
laboured with the story of the Redemption, she questioning to his
bewilderment, involving him in contradiction, worsting him again and
again, though he would not know it; till, weary of harassing, she heard
him in silence, with an unmoved attention that was worse discouragement.

His own incompetence he had known, but he had not thought himself so
unstable that the pressure of patient eyes could weigh down his clear
sense; that the lifting of night-black hair in the light wind, the curve
of a neck, the slow play of idle hands, could distract him. He knew he
had failed utterly, that he did not deserve to succeed before ever her
comment began.

'O the folly of it!' she said with wonder and scorn. 'Truly I am well
quit of a soul if it bring intelligent creatures of flesh and blood to
worship, as highest excellence conceivable, a joyless life, a degraded
death. For others? The more foolish. And you would have me repent and be
converted to that? I--I repent, who have gained this?'

She rose to her feet, flung up head and arms; her bosom heaved with a
breath of ecstasy, her lips parted, her eyes shone; the glory, power,
magic, of the deep flashed into visible embodiment in her. The perfect
woman, possessed by the spirit of the sea, unawares took worship of the
boy's heart. To seal her supremacy, a wave leaping in the gorge broke to
him the unnoted advance of the tide. He thrilled as though the sea had
actually responded to her passion.

To a new, wonderful note of power and sweetness she began, with a face
and gesture that alone were eloquent:

'O poor mortal! the deeps to you are abysses of death, while the
storm-winds, ravening, hunt you. Oh, 'tis pitiful! De