ed and watched till the sun set over
the sea; but to-day there was no smiling face rearing itself from the
blue water, no little hand beckoning him away.

"What a fool I was not to go where she beckoned!" mused Caius. "Where?
Anywhere into the heart of the ocean, out of this dull, sordid life into
the land of dreams."

For it must all have been a dream--a sweet, fantastic dream, imposed
upon his senses by some influence, outward or inward; but it seemed to
him that at the hour when he seemed to see the maid it might have been
given him to enter the world of dreams, and go on in some existence
which was a truer reality than the one in which he now was. In a
deliberate way he thought that perhaps, if the truth were known, he, Dr.
Caius Simpson, was going a little mad; but as he sat by the softly
lapping sea he did not regret this madness: what he did regret was that
he must go home and--talk to Mabel.

He rowed his boat back with feelings of blank disappointment. He could
not give another day to idleness upon the shore. It was impossible that
such an important person as himself could spend long afternoons and
evenings thus without everyone's knowledge. He had a feeling, too, born,
as many calculations are, of pure surmise, that he would have seen the
mermaid again that afternoon, when he had made such elaborate
arrangements to meet her, if Fate had destined them to meet again at
all. No; he must give her up. He must forget the hallucination that had
worked so madly on his brain.

Nevertheless, he did not deny himself the pleasure of walking very
frequently to the spot, and this often, in the early hours before
breakfast, a time which he could dispose of as he would without comment.
As he walked the beach in the beauty of the early day, he realized that
some new region of life had been opened to him, that he was feeling his
way into new mysteries of beatified thought and feeling.

A week passed; he was again upon the shore opposite the island at the
sunrise hour. He sat on the rock which seemed like a home to his
restless spirit, so associated it was with the first thoughts of those
new visions of beauty which were becoming dear to him.

He heard a soft splashing sound in the water, and, looking about him,
suddenly saw the sea-child's face lifted out of the water not more than
four or five yards from him. All around her was a golden cloud of sand;
it seemed to have been stirred up by her startled movement on seeing