Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[A] of Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape on the ruddy rocks.

[Footnote A:  Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.]

Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she gently beat time with her tail.

So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman might come into view—­just to see whether he’d really go overboard after her.

However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the floating weeds almost at her feet.

“Goodness,” she said faintly, and attempted to rise.  But her fish tail fettered her.

“Are you real!” gasped Kingsbury.

“Y-yes....  Are you?”

“Great James!” he half shouted, half sobbed, “are you human?”

“V-very.  Are you?”

He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up.  For a moment he lay breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing.  Once he feebly touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him.  It quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.

“I heard singing,” he said dreamily, “and I climbed a tree and saw—­you!  Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like you?”

“You thought I was a real one?”

“I thought that I thought I saw a real one.”

She looked at him hopefully.

“Tell me, did my singing compel you to swim out here?”

“I don’t know what compelled me.”

“But—­you were compelled?”

“I—­it seems so——­”

“O-h!” Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin and gazed at him.

“To think,” she said softly, “that you believed me to be a real siren, and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock!  Isn’t it exciting?”

He looked at her, then turned red: 

“Yes, it is,” he said.

Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she surveyed him with intense interest.  He was at a disadvantage; the sleek, half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not exhibit him at his best.

But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.