unreal, and wearisome day, but not so strange and unreal as this.”

She ceased to speak, and began again to write upon the sand. I watched her white hand moving to and fro. She wrote, “How long will it last?”

“I do not know. Not long.”

She wrote again: “If there is time at the last, when you see that it is best, will you kill me?”

I took the shell from her hand, and wrote my answer beneath her question.

The forest behind us sank into that pause and breathless hush between the noises of the day and the noises of the night. The sun dropped lower, and the water became as pink as the blooms above us.

“An you could, would you change?”