He took the hands, bending to her.  The moonlight made his eyes gleam with a strange intensity.

“I have been waiting a long time,” he said.

Even then she made a small, fluttering movement backward, as if she would evade him.  And then with a sharp sob she conquered her reluctance again.  She gave herself into his arms.

He held her closely, passionately.  He kissed her face, her neck, her bosom, as if he would devour the sweetness of her in a few mad moments of utter abandonment.

But in a little he checked himself.  “You are so late, sweetheart.  The tide won’t wait for us.  There will be time for this—­afterwards.”

She lay burning and quivering against his heart.  “There is tomorrow,” she whispered, clinging to him.

He kissed her again.  “Yes, there is tomorrow.  But who can tell what may happen then?  There will never be such a night as this again, sweet.  See the light against that rock!  It is a marvel of black and white, and I swear that the pool is green.  There is magic abroad tonight.  Let me catch it!  Let me catch it!  Afterwards!—­when the tide comes up—­we will drink our fill of love.”

He spoke as if urged by strong excitement, and having spoken his arms relaxed.  But she clung to him still.

“Oh, darling, I am frightened—­I am frightened!  I couldn’t come sooner.  I had a feeling—­of being watched.  I nearly—­very nearly—­didn’t come at all.  And now I am here—­I feel—­I feel—­afraid.”

He bent his face to hers again.  His hand rested lightly, reassuringly upon her head.  “No, no!  There is nothing to frighten you, my passion-flower.  If you had only come to me sooner it would have made it easier for you.  But now there is no time.”  The soothing note in his voice sounded oddly strained, as though an undernote of fever throbbed below it.  “You’re not going to fail me,” he urged softly.  “Think how much it means to you—­to me!  And there is only half an hour left, dear.  Give me that half-hour to catch the magic!  Then—­when the tide comes up”—­his voice sank, he whispered deeply into her ear—­“I will teach you the greatest magic this old world knows.”

She thrilled at his words, thrilled through her trembling.  She lifted her face to the moonlight.  “I love you!” she said.  “Oh, I love you!”

“And you will do this one thing for me?” he urged.

She threw her arms wide.  “I would die for you,” she told him passionately.

A moment she stood so, then with a swift movement that had in it something of fierce surrender she sprang away from him on to the flat rock above the pool where but two nights before the gates of love’s wonderland had first opened to her.

Here for a second she stood, motionless it seemed.  And then strangely, amazingly, she moved again.  The brown garment slipped from her, and like a streak of light, she was gone, and the still pool received her with a rippling splash as of fairy laughter.