as he lay on the sands. All the while he was arguing with himself.
“Well,” he said, “if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.”
But the vulgar proverb arose—“Better a live dog than a dead lion,” to answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God’s earth. Surely that was a great ignominy.
Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same seashore with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She had bathed in many rock-pools’ tepid baths, trying first one, then another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
“The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,” she said, as she rose panting, trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the anemone’s fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round
