Then she was gone, and he saw the form of her head in the water while
she swam swiftly across the silver track of the moonbeams and out into
the darkness beyond.
Caius looked around him with senses still drowsy and head aching sorely.
He was in no fairy region that might be the home of mermaids, but on the
bit of beach from which he had launched himself into the water. His
coat and hat lay near him, and just above the spot where he lay was the
rude epitaph of baby Day, carved by his own boyish hand so long ago.
Caius put his hand to his head, and found it badly bruised on one side.
His heart was bruised, too, partly by the sight of the monstrous body of
the lovely sea-child, partly by the fresh experience of his own weakness
and incapacity.
It was long before he dragged himself home. It seemed to him to be days
before he recovered from the weariness of that secret adventure, and he
bore the mark of the bruise on his head for many a day. The mermaid he
never saw again.
CHAPTER XI.
YEARS OF DISCRETION.
Caius Simpson took ship and crossed the sea. The influence of the
beautiful face remained with him. That which had come to him was the new
birth of mind (not spirit), which by the grace of God comes to many an
individual, but is more clearly recognised and recorded when it comes in
the life of nations--the opening of the inward eye to the meaning and
joy of all things that the outward senses have heretofore perceived as
not perceiving them.
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