'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.'

She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She
glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.

'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost
sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.

Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few
moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:

'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swim
there.'

'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.

'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.

She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration
came into her voice.

'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.

He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and
still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that
would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all
swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found
himself saying: