s, and a most
rollicking song issuing from the mighty chest of Master Jeremy Sparrow.
With the woodsmen had gone my lord.

I walked a little way into the forest, and shouted a warning to Sparrow
against venturing too far. When I returned to the giant tree and the
cloth in the shadow of its outer branches, my wife was writing on the
sand with a pointed shell. She had not seen or heard me, and I stood
behind her and read what she wrote. It was my name. She wrote it three
times, slowly and carefully; then she felt my presence, glanced swiftly
up, smiled, rubbed out my name, and wrote Sparrow's, Diccon's, and the
King's in succession. "Lest I should forget to make my letters," she
explained.

I sat down at her feet, and for some time we said no word. The light,
falling between the heavy blooms, cast bright sequins upon her dress and
dark hair. The blooms were not more pink than her cheeks, the recesses
of the forest behind us not deeper or darker than her eyes. The laughter
and the song came faintly to us now. The sun was low in the west, and a
wonderful light slept upon the sea.

"Last year we had a masque at court," she said at length, breaking the
long silence. "We had Calypso's island, and I was Calypso. The island
was built of boards covered with green velvet, and there was a mound
upon it of pink silk roses. There was a deep blue painted sea below,
and a deep blue painted sky above. My nymphs danced around the mound of
roses, while I sat upon a real rock beside the painted sea and talked
with Ulysses--to wit, my Lord of Buckingham--in gold armor. That was
a strange, bright, unreal, and wearisome day, but not so strange and
unreal as this."

She ceased to speak, and began again to write upon the sand. I watched
her white hand moving to and fro. She wrote, "How long will it last?"

"I do not know. Not long."

She wrote again: "If there is time at the last, when you see that it is
best, will you kill me?"

I took the shell from her hand, and wrote my answer beneath her
question.

The forest behind us sank into that pause and breathless hush between
the noises of the day and the noises of the night. The sun dropped
lower, and the water became as pink as the blooms above us.

"An you could, would you change?" I asked. "Would you return to England
and safety?"

She took a handful of the sand and let it slowly drift through her white
fingers. "You know that I would not," she said; "not if the end were
to come t