Antinous dipped his right oar in the waves with a practised hand to alter
the head of the boat and was in the act of pulling his hand up to make
his stroke against the pressure of the waves--but he did not complete the
movement, nay he counteracted the stroke by a dexterous reverse action; a
strange vision arrested his attention. On the terrace, which lay full in
the bright moonlight, there appeared a white-robed figure with long
floating hair.

How strangely it moved! It went now to one side and now to the other,
then again it stood still and clasped its head in its hands. Antinous
shuddered, he could not help thinking of the Daimons of which Hadrian so
often spoke. They were said to be of half-divine and half-human nature,
and sometimes appeared in the guise of mortals.

Or was Selene dead and was the white figure her wandering shade?
Antinous clutched the handles of the oars, now merely floating on the
water, and bending forward gazed fixedly and with bated breath at the
mysterious being which had now reached the balustrade of the terrace,
now--he saw quite plainly--covered its face with both hands, leaned far
over the parapet, and now as a star falls through the sky on a clear
night, as a fruit drops from the tree in autumn, the white form of the
girl dropped from the terrace. A loud cry of anguish broke the silence
of the night which veiled the world, and almost at the same instant the
water splashed and gurgled up, and the moonbeams, cold and bright as
ever, were mirrored in the thousand drops that flew up from its surface.

Was this Antinous, the indolent dreamer, who so promptly plunged his oars
in the water, pulled a powerful stroke, and then, when in a few seconds
after her fall, the form of the drowning girl came to the surface again